A Briefer History of Time: How tech changes us in unexpected ways

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? Watch these next: Borrowed Light and Carl Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar.

via Open Culture.