We are heading to Hereford for the weekend, buoyed up by reports that this border county of Herefordshire is the capital of ‘slow’. Research for the trip turned up a curious press report from the Hereford Times which featured nearby Leominster’s millenium clock. The article from two years ago featured news of probable vandalism of the clock, which was chiming an hour late. The unusual timepiece features a reference to Sarah Leeke, in 1817 the last woman in England to fall victim of a ducking stool. I wonder whether the clock was vandalised by furious feminists.
What caught my eye in the article was a comment from Molly Cook, chair of the committee which oversaw the installation of the clock in 2007. Cook commented, “Mechanisms are funny and the slightest thing can complicate them.” In my experience the biggest source of ‘complication’ in mechanisms are people. We are always messing up the pristine purity of tidy systems or well oiled machines. The notion of persons as ‘complications’ to well ordered mechanisms is frankly, chillingly contrary. Every so often people try to fit in with mechanisms so as not to complicate them, but I’m reminded of Wendell Berry’s description of dehumanized humanity – ‘thing-ridden men’. The purpose of mechanisms is surely to enhance humanity. It should give us some pause for reflection that those same mechanisms easily take on a life of their own and trap people in clockwork of our own making.
For good or ill clocks don’t only measure the passage of time, but have supplanted an earlier sense of time as the rhythm of seasons or the arrival and departure of days marked by solar or lunar cycles. A device which purported to measure time accurately (and has brought many advantages) has wormed its way inside our consciousness. Any office worker who has ever indulged in ‘clock-watching’ or most of us who complain of ‘not enough hours in the day’ will confirm the point. Measured time is hastened, stretched and controlled. Those who control the time (those who own the factory clock), also control the workforce. The military connotation of the word ‘workforce’ might also be worth a moment of reflection.
So, long may people complicate mechanisms. God bless the vandals and the Luddites! I’ll raise a glass of best Herefordshire scrumpy to clocks that run slowly.
2 comments:
Our school network suffered 'something' this week. Every internal clock in the individual computers entered a timewarp and came out between 6 and 9 hours out. There was no way of resetting them without closing the network down and dealing with each computer by itself until they all synchronised their watches - and then back to the network.
It reminded me of the threats of the Millennium Bug - and gave a taster of the disaster that could have happened. A bigger disaster that the teachers all had to think about chalk and talk teaching after living in an environment that promoted ICT based learning.
I find the time surrounding technology is always a bit wobbly and good at escaping through the mouseclicks. I am enough of a Luddite to agree with William Morris that technology should be a tool rather than a master. Steve Jobs said that the computer should be ' the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds' - we should use it to take us on wonderful journeys not to be like hamsters on a static wheel going nowhere:)
Talking of William Morris, we had an interesting time at the Victoria and Albert museum earlier this month. I'm increasingly attracted to that Arts and Crafts ethos. Living so near to Walthamstow is a good opportunity and I look forward to visiting the William Morris museum when it reopens next year.
There's a mystery associated with technology. However much precision it promises us there's always a cluster of associated unintended consequences that follow. I do remember the hope of a 'paperless office' and the myth of clean atomic power.
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