Analog clocks with the sweep-second hand sometimes are based on mechanical motion. That familiar tick, tock is a movie staple. That sound is etched in our mind and is a reminder of the constant passage of time.
Humans have improved timekeeping dramatically. When I was younger, clocks and watches would often have to be reset at least once a month or so to maintain some semblance of accuracy. Today, it's possible to buy cheap quartz or digital watches that may lose a second a year. Many models now work off signals from the national nuclear clock and are so accurate they might be off by less than a second over the course of a century! They will be accurate as long as they have some constant source of power.
When I think of technology, I think of relentless efficiency. I think of assembly line robots rhytmically repeating the same motions over and over again. I believe technology is great at taking a known process and making it better. Once humans defined what time should be, they set out making it as accurate as possible. There may be even better ways of getting slightly more efficient, but the difference between the new and the old is so small that it is probably not worth the effort.
As we continue to search for relentless efficiency, it may pay to remember the limits of technology. I use the example of my GPS.
My GPS unit is a fairly basic model. It stores information about millions of places and hundreds of thousands of streets across North America (including Hawaii). I can never aspire to know the streets in random town halfway across the country, but I am sure it may come in handy if I were ever lost in the backwoods of Maine. Despite my limitations, I can also do some things more effectively than that unit.
On my normal route into Boston, my unit will direct me to take Route 1 to get to the freeway. I usually take the back roads. While Route 1 is quicker by straight-line distance, it also has at least three major stoplights that invariably turn red just as I approach. Once you factor that into the equation, it can often be much quicker via the longer route. We've learned to ignore the disappointment in her voice as she says "recalculating" over and over again.
I suppose it's only a matter of time before the computers develop the ability to grab the wheel away from me....
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