Kalyani Tupkary

I n eighty-five essays, contributors nominate “extinct” objects and address them in a series of short, vivid, sometimes personal accounts, speaking not only of obsolete technologies, but of other ways of thinking, making, and interacting with the world.  Extinct  is filled with curious, half-remembered objects, each one evoking a future that never

But while nature may mete out time’s passage in these horological devices, it takes human observation of the heavens to set them. Even the most precise atomic clock must be periodically tweaked to account for variations in the earth’s rotation. Some clocks, however, are tuned more directly to nature.

Among many other factors, technology shifted productivity from a collectivist, nationalist pursuit to one that’s far more individualistic, but the underlying motivation is the same even if the medium has changed. The nepreryvka calendar is a great example of this. In the same way the calendar made it easier for people to mindlessly ease into their