I have a lot of gripes about digital clocks. The most obvious one is about their ubiquity…they are seemingly everywhere. It seems that every consumer piece of electronics has a clock display these days. Ironically enough, this overkill of clock displays turns all of them into background noise for me. I see so much alphanumeric data these days that I don’t see what time the toaster is displaying anymore. This ultimately offends me in that it is a waste, of my time (irony here!), and my pocketbook, since I am the one who pays for the display…
Another problem with digital clock displays is that they are too accurate. I could ask almost anyone: “when was the last time you actually, really, needed to have time accuracy to the second?” I can speak for myself and say that for my typical daily scheduling I can easily live with 5 minute accuracy, anything more accurate than that is unneeded.
Finally, there is the real problem of the digital display itself. Trying to instantly tell the time (to 5 minute accuracy) with a digital watch) for me) involves my having to scan the display into my mind and then I have to ‘translate this to a traditional clock face. This takes place very quickly.
I have written my share of computer code in my life, and this sort of subroutine offends my sense of design elegance. In essence, if the traditional analog clock face works so well, that we use this format internally…why change it?
Since I am now talking about (metaphorical) mental subroutines, I should mention that learning how to tell time (i.e. way back in early elementary school…) takes some effort to learn. I would imagine that leaning how to tell time with digital displays is far easier to teach. The problem here, is that while I could teach a young student to recite what the display ‘says’ , I wonder if learning how to ‘tell time’ this way allows students to begin to effectively use this as a personal tool.
Learning how to tell time with a traditional clock face allows students to intuitively grasp how to use the clock face as a tool. There is no need (yet) to have to prepare students to have to deal with base 60 counting, not to mention base 12 and 24. This could come in several years later…after they have developed intuitive skills in using this display.
At least from the standpoint of teaching how to tell time, to teach using a digital display would ultimately seem to be putting the cart before the horse.
As a sidebar to this topic, I think that teaching students to develop skills lie this is quite worthwhile. Becoming efficient at telling time is nearly as important as to completely internalize the alphabet. I would maintain that learning how to use arithmetic in the same manner has real value too!
From what I see in modern math classes, this seems to be outside of the’ current model’, what, with the complete reliance upon calculators for students to do the most prosaic of tasks. I personally think that this is a crippling of our children, especially in an age where the deeper you understand mathematics the better off you will be. That is something you could take to the bank…
