My wife owns an Apple Watch. She loves it. I won’t get one because I already feel too tied to my phone, and I don’t want the added distraction. Before getting one, my wife would carry her phone and wear a watch, now they are one and the same.
I have reverted back to the era of pocket watches. No, I don’t own an old-style pocket watch, I just have my phone. But, I haven’t worn a watch in years, and I tell the time by my phone… which I keep in my pocket. I store my ‘timekeeper’ in my pocket.
I’m sure there is still a market for wrist (and even pocket) watches, but excluding phones and phone accessories, that has to be a dying market compared to sales in the last century.
What about in the next century? Surely we won’t be keeping our phones in our pockets, and we won’t be using these phones to tell time. There won’t be any pocket watches of any kind but for novelty. So what will we have in place of these tools?
Will the technology be embedded into us? Will we be wearing contacts that display the time with a simple motion of our eyes, or even by a thought? Will we look at our bare wrist or open palm and ‘see’ data there? And if we achieve this, what other things will become trivially redundant like the pocket watch?
I don’t feel nostalgia when I think of these things. I’m excited about the possibilities, but I do wonder how these tools will adjust our behaviour? After all, I’m not one of those people that just jumped at the idea of putting my phone on my wrist. As we adopt and accept technology into our lives, we do need to think about the unintended consequences. A person only took their pocket watch out of their pocket to tell the time. People looked at their wrists only to tell time. That’s no longer the case. People look at their phones far more than to make phone calls And tell time.
I’m writing this on my phone now. I’m blogging from my phone. I’ve also got headphones on, listening to music from the same phone. Will this glorified phone and pocket watch be something people use 20, 40 or 100 years from now? I don’t think so. It will likely not be a tool we put in our pocket. How will this change our behaviour? I’m sure it will be more convenient, but what unintended consequences will come with these new tools?
