[eschulz]

I'm reminded of how time pieces such as sundials changed societies, and how some ancients almost lost their minds due to this new development.

“The Gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish the hours---confound him, too Who in this place set up a sundial To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small pieces ! . . . I can't (even sit down to eat) unless the sun gives leave. The town's so full of these confounded dials . . .” ― Plautus

[go_elmo]

Finally someone who understands me. Whatever becomes measurable, becomes controllable, which is the antidote to freedom, wildness, life (to some extent)..

[sdenton4]

My favorite Samuel Delany story is about a woman in a village who invents writing, and teaches it to all the children. She makes a rule that you're never allowed to write down people's names, as it will inevitably lead to keeping records comparing people, and thus leading to strife...

[supportengineer]

I’m ethically torn whether to upvote this

[dylan604]

Being able to have simplicity of working on a task until it is done when society didn't have these per hour scheduling concepts. I remember hearing this referenced when learning about Amish and Native American cultures. Essentially, this is what were doing. When it is finished, we move on to next. No arbitrary start/stop time because some hand on a dial is pointing at a certain number.

[jfengel]

Note that Plautus was a comic writer, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. I'd treat is like a Seinfeld observational humor joke -- realistic but exaggerated.

[verbify]

> some ancients almost lost their minds due to this new development

Platus lived 254 – 184 BC. Sundials are from 1500BC. While it's a great quote, it certainly wasn't a new invention when he wrote it.

[noosphr]

Electric cars were invented in 1881 a full 4 years before the first internal combustion car.

[eschulz]

Being invented doesn't mean that they became commonly used. Many ancient inventions took thousands of years to rollout and be adopted by the vast majority of humans.

[xandrius]

Yep, they definitely could have bought it from Amazon.

[WalterBright]

Using a vertical stick to track the sun's position goes back much, much further.

[zzo38computer]

I do believe that time keeping, computers, and other technology are overused and overly relied on. (There is also damaging other stuff due to these technology, which is another issue. There are other issues too; these are clearly not the only thing.) They have their uses, but should not be excessive at the expense of anything else. If they fail, then you won't do unless you know and have not destroyed the older possibility, and if they do not fail, then you may be trapped by them. You should not need to know what time it is to sit down to eat, or to wake up and to sleep, etc.