Clock in the industrial age
Lewis Mumford wrote in his work《Technics and Civilization》in 1934.
the clock, not the steam engine, is the key machine of the industrial age.
For us human beings, mechanical time is more fremdheit. We live with certain rhythm incerted in organs and inside selves: the perfect state of the pulse, the natural breath of the lungs, all of these change with the flow of our actions and fluctuations of our mood. For longer days ahead, time is not measured by calendars but events that occupied.
“The dynamic structure of plants reminds us that our ideas of life and death go back to an era when we had no idea of functioning—something machines make us think about. Living beings are based on a cycle, or rather on a system of cycles and epicycles—of which they are only vaguely aware—Sometimes these cycles are easily linked to astronomical cycles—and the general idea of time is introduced—as ‘Order of the world’.
However, time is particular to each system and each functioning, of which it is the vague name” (Valéry 2001, vol. 4, p. 146).6
The order of the world
The industrial clock constructed an "order of the world", from which time means the pendulum of machines, it gauges everything, including your income, your meetings, your schedule, your routine...you stick to the "tick tock" cautiously and go from 9 to 6(9).
This orderness rings again in《Technics and Civilization》
"During the first seven centuries of the existence of machines, the categories of time and space underwent extraordinary changes, and any aspect of life was touched by this transformation. The application of quantitative methods of thought to the study of nature found its first expression in the regular measurement of time; the new concept of mechanical time arose in part from the daily work of the monastery ...... Within the monastic walls was sanctity; surprise, doubt, caprice and irregularity were kept at bay under the rule of order. In contrast to the erratic fluctuations and pulsations of secular life is the iron discipline of rule ...... Coulton agrees with Sombart that the Benedictines, the great body of work, were perhaps the founding fathers of modern capitalism; their rules certainly removed the curse of work, and their vibrant engineering enterprise may have even robbed war of some of its charms.
Thus, one is not exaggerating when one suggests that monasteries - at one time there were 40,000 under the Benedictines - helped human enterprise acquire the regular collective beat and rhythm of the machine; for the clock was not merely a means of recording time, but of synchronizing people's actions."
In a context of We the order, clock time is represented by the mechanical instrument bound around our wrist reminding seconds,minutes,hours and hours..."I" don't have to understand "time" because it is something I never have expected/had.
But if a context with "I" becomes urgrent, I mind my actions, my skills, my breath , my emotions... everything about "I" i cares. Understanding time is my highest demand.
"We are one in all and all in one.
There are no men but the great WE.
One, indivisible and forever."
——Ayn Rand 《Anthem》
From《The Order of Time》 by Carlo Rovelli, Time has never been expressed in a fixed form, it's just that human beings need to express in some form their neediness and mastery of the thing itself, and so there is a presentation of time.
Similar descriptions are also found in,
"In the days of the time clock (Stekuhr), the time for work and rest was clearly separated. Today it is possible to work anywhere, anytime, with laptops and smartphones building a mobile labor camp.”--The Burnout Society Byung-Chul Han
Any physical phenomena may be used as a clock, provided it can be exactly repeated as many times as desired.-- Einstein & Infeld (1939)
As individual starts to realize his rights to understand time, it is not always a good thing (isn't it?). Coz it will cause growing doubt for the existing rules and orders given by the existing clock, or may bring more chaotic.
Clocks are not necessarily here to construct a uniform order, but to allow events to occur. That is to say, there is no uniform order and it is still possible to prove events.
If I am not suffering from hypochondria, then it is possible that something is NOT RIGHT with the clock itself. "Must the clock be unified?" A weak voice from somewhere in the corner threw out this apparent question.