Chase You

Echo In An Empty House

Lose An Hour

Make Coordination Possible

Measure

Melt

Move And Stay Put

Move Without Leaving

Need A Specialist

Need Fixing

Need Winding

Organize Time

Sit In A Bookcase

Synchronize

Tick Without Touching

clock

time

dad joke

hunger

seconds

game

tic-tac-toe

hungry

duck

clock time

temporality

one-liner

impatience

mixed metaphor

patience

hour

second

trivia

ology (the study of)

phobia

woman

I like my [x] like I like my [y]

reimagining the [x]

consistency

watch

incense

In this ancient time keeping device, tiny metal balls are suspended from a stick of incense by string, laid at set distances. When the burning incense reaches a string, it burns it, releasing the balls onto the metal plate to indicate a certain amount of time has passed.

is accompanied by the cultivation of cognitive dependency on it and the logics it hides.

The transcultural distribution of objects of time has been accompanied by the cultivation of cognitive dependency on these objects and the logics they hide.

is, as a time-reckoning tool, not merely a creation of the mind, but a creation for the shaping of thought.

As artifacts used to think, time-reckoning tools are not merely creations of the mind, as some describe artifacts (Margolis and Laurence 2007), but creations for the shaping of thought.

is, in the colonial context, used to manage the rhythms of the colonized.

The problem Kabyle had with clock time and the Gregorian calendar seems to be less a problem of the logics in these cognitive artifacts colliding with Kabyle rhythms and more a problem of French colonials using clocks and calendars to attempt to manage Kabyle rhythms.

colonialism

discipline

is not simply a technical device that reveals time but a tool that calculates and represents it.

To apply Vygotsky's insights to clocks and calendars, then, involves ceasing to view them simply as technical devices that reveal time and coming to view them as tools that calculate and represent time.

is responsible for cognitive processes having moved away from phenomena directly available to human perception (i.e. Charting the sun and stars) toward abstract ideas of time measured and mediated by complex machines that produce intelligible results (i.e. Measuring the vibration of cesium atoms).

Understanding the modern experience and conception of time requires understanding the cognitive processes that have been embedded in calendars and clocks, and these cognitive processes have moved away from phenomena directly available to human perception and toward abstract ideas of time measured and mediated by complex machines that produce intelligible results so that charting the rising and setting of the Sun is something that humans can easily do, but the measurement of the vibration of cesium atoms is quite different.

is a device on whose reliance certain cognitive skills atrophy even as it allows increased precision.

A similar argument can be made about objects of time, namely, that certain cognitive skills become less common or atrophy through the reliance on clocks and calendars, even as these artifacts allow increases in precision. These skills can be cultivated, but normally are not, because their cultivation creates a sense of multiple temporalities of which clocks and calendars represent only two. To place these alternate temporalities in counterpoint with the dominant modes of reckoning time challenges these dominant modes. Ironically, the skills that atrophy might involve the very skills originally designed into the artifact. What Hutchins says of navigation equipment and cognitive mediation is also applicable to clocks and calendars: 'The symbols themselves are dematerialized and placed inside the machine, or fed to it in a form that permits the straightforward generation of internal representations. What is important about this is that all the problems the mathematician faced when interacting with a world of material symbol tokens are avoided' (1995, 363).

 slays time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels... only when the clock stops does time come to life.

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels... only when the clock stops does time come to life.

is a device that shapes cognition in particular ways and diminishes other cognitive skills (such as the reading out of time from the environment).

In effect, time is a cultural construction, but in its current form, including its form in the grade-school classroom, it has been strongly shaped by the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and the key components of that construction are embedded in material objects. Yet, one wonders if as the objects shape cognition in particular ways, they diminish other cognitive skills.

clock, n.Memes

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