I wear a broken watch. It hasn’t ticked for almost two years – since about the start of the pandemic. You could probably find some symbolism in this, if you had the time. But lately, that’s one thing I’ve been struggling to come across. When I do eventually encounter some small pocket of the stuff outside my current schedule, I choose to simply rest or (almost as often) fail to rest, while duties better left for the future clamour for attention in the present.
I’m not travelling any more, as such. But when I was, there was something to be said for wearing a broken watch. It was coherent with my mode of life; a subtle suggestion of my freedom from the uniformity of time, which itinerancy and joblessness allowed. Which is to say, when time wasn’t measured precisely by the minutes and the tasks that filled them, I measured my life by the sights, smells and experiences offered by new places.
But since settling in Mexico City, I have moved back into a rhythm that demands punctuality. Interviews have been scheduled, deadlines set, classes in Spanish are booked. To check the hour, I look at my watch – then, seeing its frozen face, I turn to my phone. It’s with this small action where the problems begin.
My schedule is directed by the elements that jump up on the handset’s interface: messages inviting me to press events; the Duolingo owl demanding that I “Practice every day!”; emails informing me of more work coming down the line. In many ways, our phones have claimed a monopoly on our time. They are the tools – and, as such, establish the principles – that regulate our lives.
This is not to say that clocks and watches never did this too: the invention of time as we know it came in tandem with the development of modern capitalism.1 Born in Greenwich, London, GMT provided a point to which the whole world would orient itself, a means of ordering the vast system of trains and trade routes that were spreading like tendrils from the mercantile nation to its posts at home and around the world. Adopted in proper by Britain in 1876 and internationally in 1884, it became official: time was regular, trade was more efficient and there was money to be made.
So technology, ideology, capital – they all have some influence on our use of time. It’s nothing new. And the smartphone is the latest incarnation of a tool that coordinates ever-larger groups of people with a fresh panoply of pings, buzzes and icons that flash. With this in mind, if I were to avoid using my phone to check the time, I would be taking a kind of step back: with those event invitations no longer the first thing I see when I go to check the hour, I’d be at one small remove form social life; without that officious owl consistently within my line of vision, a few extra minutes of Spanish practice would probably fall away each day; those emails that currently assert themselves would not force me into step with contemporary business life. The question, then, is this: What is to be gained from not using my phone to check the time – and is it worth it?
Before I answer, I have a confession: my watch is not broken. In truth, I haven’t replaced the battery in the past two years. And, looking closely at it’s face, it seems that it’s suffered for this: those five-minute markers, in dark grey and slight relief, have grown dirty brown spots that spread around them. I’m assuming that this is all down to the stillness within that watch case: just as bacteria spawn freely in the motionless waters of a swamp, they have spread while the watch’s hands stand still. I haven’t confirmed this with anyone, but it seems plausible. But the theory comes to me alongside another suspicion, one that’s not nearly so convincing. It’s the suspicion that, if I were to replace the battery and see my watch’s hands begin to turn again, those slight brown stains would reverse course, would fade away like spots that dance across the retina after waking.
I know this can’t be right. Regardless, I will replace the battery. I think it’s worth it: to take a step back from modernity and away from countless glances at a screen. Phones have changed our relationships with our timepieces from simply indicating the time – as the watch does – to directly curating it. They have become too total in their remit, too constraining. Those dirty marks on my watch will stay. And maybe it’s not such a bad thing. They can serve to remind me of the deeper stains that our phones can leave on our lives.
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While we’re on the subject, apologies for my slight tardiness. I’ve been up to my nose in things. Here’s a link to one of them:
https://monocle.com/radio/shows/the-stack/492/
Hasta la próxima,
Louis
Before this, church bells would toll out the hours across most of Europe and the colonies. Religion directed our time.