Technics and Civilization
Mumford discusses the emergence and impact of the mechanical clock, originating in monasteries, on society's perception of time, organization, and industrialization.
bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.comTechnics and Civilization
Sundials, hourglasses and water clocks already existed in the ancient world, in the Mediterranean region and in China – but they did not play the cruel role that clocks have today in the organization of our lives. It is only in the fourteenth century in Europe that people’s lives start to be regulated by mechanical clocks. Cities and villages build
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- "Clock time, Mills learned, is the result of an unending search for consensus. Even the times told by the world’s most precise government-maintained “master clocks” are composites of the readings of several atomic clocks. The master clocks, in turn, are averaged to help create international civil time, known as Coördinated Universal Time and... See more
The New Yorker • The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time
The greed for speed embodied in the factory clock signalled the triumph of linear time. Now it was the artificial construct of minutes and seconds that mattered rather than the natural cycles of the moon or seasons. The long-term future began to fade away as the present loomed ever larger.
Roman Krznaric • The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World
with the invention of the clock, Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events.
Neil Postman • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
But time was simultaneously a fixed grid, and a possession. Everyone was encouraged to see time as did the medieval merchant: as a finite property to be carefully budgeted and disposed of, much like money. What’s more, the new technologies also allowed any person’s fixed time on earth to be chopped up into uniform units that could be bought and sol
... See moreDavid Graeber • Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
In the process, we have learned irreverence toward the sun and the seasons, for in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is superseded. Indeed, as Mumford points out, with the invention of the clock, Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events.