Fewer Clocks

A couple months ago, I moved my weather/clock Sony Dash from being centrally located -- easily visible -- to a more remote corner of my livingroom space.  The workday is filled with glances at the clock, mental checks of the calendar, and quick calculations of time remaining to get today's critical tasks done.  The livingroom doesn't really need to do that.  (At least not as much.)

So a few weeks ago, I switched my bike's console from showing the time to showing its total mileage.  After all, what's the use of knowing minute-to-minute how early/late I'm going to be?  It's a bad idea to be in a hurry on two wheels.

I'm enjoying the change.

It makes me wonder if there's a philosophical/hypertension difference between people with wrist-watches and anachronists who use their smartphone as a pocket-watch.  There's got to be an entire history of cultures' concepts of time, and the ways they sync their collective knowledge of the current time.  Does a citywide clock tower's chimes count as hive-mind infrastructure?