Well it's About Time! The Parable of the Digital Watch - Mike Einstein - MediaBizBlogger

Remember when digital watches were all the rage It was the early 1970s and nothing flattered a good apache scarf and muttonchops like a big rubycrystaled digital watch Talk about cool 300 out the door battery included Hans Conried Dr Terwilliger of The 5000 Fingers of Dr T fame would39ve asked quotIs it atomicquot quotYes sir very atomicquotBut where are they now Last time I looked digital watches had come full circle from Mod Squad accoutrement to Happy Meal prize In fact I think it now costs more to replace the battery than it does to replace the whole watchJust how did the digital watch become a footnote of the 70s The answer was and is literally staring us right in the clock face and all I can say is it39s about timeTo see just how far we haven39t come let39s review the premise behind this early foray into all things digitalI39m guessing that the idea was to apply new quartzcrystal digital technology to produce time accuracy to within one hundredth of a second But unless your particular watch was synchronized to the atomic clock in Colorado it would always be a least a hundredth of a second or two either too fast or too slow Perhaps perish the thought as much as even seven or eight hundredths of a second off Technically no pun intended your new watch though capable would never show the exact time unless of course it stopped cold which would render it perfectly accurate for two onehundredths of a second each day or in the case of military time only one onehundredth of a second each day Then again if it stopped cold you wouldn39t be able to read the display at all so you39d have absolutely no idea what time it was Speaking of which batterywilling many of the early digital watches featured display backlight buttons that required twohanded operation relegating the user to old quotcheapsuit jokequot status quotDon39t you feel sorry for that poor bastardquot quotYeah but he sure has a good lookin39 watchquot Lastly pity the guy whose digital display lighted or not was so small he needed reading glasses just to know what time it wasn39tThis new technology threatened our entire concept of time Instead of asking quotIs it lunchtimequot we39d say quotNot quite In fact it39s only 114618quot Or quotIt39s not quarter to eight It39s seven fortytwo and tenamp8230no make that fourteen secondsquot By the time you read the whole display it really was quarter to eight And if you misplaced the 60page owner39s manual you were basically screwed every time you ventured into a different time zoneThe reason these newfangled contraptions never made the cut is because they took a perfectly good concept time and wrecked it Time is our only personal asset of any ultimate value and the digital watch by design cheapened it The more we indulged the inexorable march of the digital readout the more we felt ourselves falling behind some cosmic timetable The visionaries who concocted this conspiracy against Swiss craftsmanship would have been better served by first asking themselves quotWho needs itquot Case in point Albert Einstein certainly no stranger to time or things atomic never even wore a watch and he went to school in Switzerland Yet he could still tell you exactly when the station got to the train hint the same time the train got to the stationEarly societies told time by the sun They also had the good sense not to schedule a lot of nighttime appointments Time was measured by the temperature of the air the changing of the leaves length of daylight In a more romantic existential vein time is what we make of it our Dickensian allotment of hopes and dreams neither the best nor worst of which includes a digital watchRemember the classic Three Stooges routine when Moe asks Curly for the time Curly pulls up his sleeve to reveal three watches analog of course Asks Moe quotWhat39s with the three watchesquot Curly replies quotThat39s how I tell time See the one on this end is three hours fast every other day The one on the other end is two hours slow each Thursday The one in the middle is broken and stopped ticking last Tuesdayquot quotSoquot says Moe quotWhat time is itquot Curly reaches into his pocket pulls out a pocket watch and says quotFourthirtyquot And they call them stooges Go figureThe rock band Chicago a 70s icon that succeeded challenged our most primitive instincts by asking quotDoes anybody really know what time it is Does anybody really carequot Our outright rejection of the digital watch would suggest that we39d rather be free to ask the question than shackled by the answer And for what it39s worth not one of my pets two dogs two cats and a horse knows how to tell time Yet for all their technological shortcomings not one has ever been late for a mealAbout Mike Einstein and the Brothers EinsteinMike Einstein is onehalf of the Brothers Einstein a creative strategy and branding boutique The Brothers Einstein work with select rapidgrowth clients to help define and execute healthy brand strategies in a toxic media environment

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