Time As A Means
‘Time As A Means’ Eleanor & Alexander Hayes
From a historical perspective of the effect that technological innovations have had on humanity, we must consider the relevance of time as a linear narrative or in an intercultural consideration that time is of no shape rather we are simply occurring within it. For example, we are bound by time in a western context, yet we have options as to how to interpret that constraint using other cultural understandings ie. Aboriginal culture.
English Anarchist philosopher George Woodcock published a short essay in 1944 called the “Tyranny of the Clock” in which he railed against the “oppression” of the human spirit by the mechanical clock. He said that the natural rhythms of the days and seasons were replaced by the invention of the pendulum clock in the 17th century.
“… Time rather than being a cycle became measured and we have become regimented and enslaved by this machine, we cram our food, rush from our families, leave things undone so we can clock on and clock off. The modern clock developed around the time that the industrial revolution was starting in England …. it replaced the hourglass and the candle and the arc of the sun or the moon and brought in a way of looking at a time that nobody ever had before. The “enclosure acts” of the English parliament cleared people off the common land and to survive many migrated to take jobs in factories where their lives were regulated by the bell or whistle telling people when to start work, when to go to the toilet, when to eat lunch and when to go home.” - ‘The Tyranny Of The Clock’ - George Woodcock
So, as we consider now that time is locked onto us by wearable computing ie. smartwatch, that brings the clock closer to the human form and in a research context, we can examine how that ‘wearable clock’ is in fact as Heidegger posits, how we have now become the clock. The shift from that hierarchical and mechanized means by which to control industrialized masses to a digital ‘always responding’ cyborg was a gradual one yet the next level of a syndicated implanted timekeeper being may be swift and relentless unlike the last shift for humanity.
