Have you ever gone camping where you wake and sleep with the sun and moon? Have you played outside all morning, only coming in when you get hungry for lunch?
What was life like before we could measure time? How have clocks changed our behaviors — our work, our play, our sleep, our values, our expectations, our cultures — as humans?
Perhaps it all changed in the year 1657. This is Fusion’s A Briefer History of Time: How technology changes us in unexpected ways, a video essay by Adam Westbrook that argues that “when we mechanized time, we also and completely by accident, mechanized us…”
“Now we don’t eat when we’re hungry, we eat when it’s time to eat. We don’t sleep when we’re tired, we sleep when it’s time to sleep.”
Is this true for you? How have different technologies changed your days and nights?
β’ Al Jarnowβs Cosmic Clock (1979)
β’Β Schiphol Clock: Painting and erasing a clock in real-time
β’ Borrowed Light
β’Β What can we do to save our dark skies? (And why should we?)
β’Β Zoom in, zoom out: The train speed illusion
β’Β Why do we confuse weather and climate?
β’ How to transform nervous feelings into positive energy
β’ When Time Became History: The Human Era
β’ Carl Saganβs Cosmic Calendar
via Open Culture.
Curated, kid-friendly, independently-published. Support this mission by becoming a sustaining member today.