The Negative Impact of Clocks on Human Nature Alino Te 10/17/2013

I argue that Ihde is incorrect that technology gives us a new positive medium to interact with nature; specifically clocks negatively distance people from nature.
Comment [1]: Include your premises in your introductory paragraph. Set up your paper with an introduction.

Nature is the world around people. The other people, animals, rocks, watches, plants, and anything that is extended in space is what the world around is comprised of. But more so than the plants and animals around, nature is the basic instincts within all people. It is the drive and desires that is nature to humans. These basic instincts within all people include, but are not limited to, self preservation (Professor Berenson stated that a robot would happily pummel itself to bits), curiosity, and? or imagination.

Don Ihde suggests the alternative to the common schools of thought of machines are not equal to machines and the opposition of humans are machines. Ihde suggests that humans and machines interact and transform each other (Ihde 2010, 37). Although Ihde does not discuss clocks directly, we can extend his theory to say thatHe is correct in that clocks are transforming humans, but for the worse. Sometimes when interacting with technology, we become unconscious; the action takes over and we are at the mercy of subconscious or muscle memory. Typing on the keyboard, for example, people don't actively think of the keys they are about to hit; people think of a word and then the action takes over. This can be a bad thing in that it takes consciousness out of the action. There is no intent in the action. If a person is not conscious in the action, the person's awareness is removed. There is no sense of awareness for the hands moving and the fingers hitting the keys . The unconscious actions with
Comment [3]: Incomplete sentence. Comment [2]: Spend some time defining the category clocks and explaining its relevance/why you are interested in examining this technology.

technology removes people from themselves.

Comment [4]: This claim warrants much more argumentation.

The technology of clocks makes people less aware of themselves and the world/nature around them. For the most part, people have schedules for everything. When to wake up, when to eat, when to go to the bathroom, when to work, and so and so forth. People are not waking up naturally, eating when they need to, working when they want to, and will only relax when the clock permits them to do so. For example, people will eat when the clock is showing 12:00pm (Or some other time, it does not matter for the purpose of the example) not when they are actually hungry. People are being forced to wake up by the clocks. People are pushing their natural instincts of eating when hungry away and eating when the clock denotes a specific time. Since people are not eating when they naturally are they are distancing themselves from their natural instincts. The lack of awareness that comes from clocks is lack of awareness of ourselves. Ihde even states that, The embodiment activity thus transforms and in some sense displaces consciousness... (Ihde 2010, 38).
Comment [6]: Take some time to explain this quote. Comment [5]: Incomplete sentence.

People live their whole lives around the clock. Productivity and efficiency are valued by society. Employers value more work in less time. More work in less time equates to more money per hour. Productivity and efficiency are practically a virtue that people work towards. Brian Fay states that Each minute separate but equal to every other minute, one leading to the next and then to the ext, and so on... (Fay 2013, 91). Now,the distinction can be made between time experience and clock time. Clock time is as described by Fay in that it is uniform, constant, unchanging. Clock time is, unsurprisingly, represented by clocks. Experienced time is nonuniform, nonlinear, and ever changing. Experienced time is different in that minutes can feel like hours and hours like eternities. The famous
Comment [7]: This is not a complete sentence. Explain what his point is. Comment [8]: Good point.

quote that Albert Einstein quipped, Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like and hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute ..., (citation?) shows this. Experiencing time is dependent on the situation. Sitting in a boring class feels like eternity whereas sitting in an enjoyable class feels like quick moments passing by. When people are working or are busy they are on clock time. People are trying to get as much work done as possible and it is all the same. Reiterating what Fay stated, each moment is the same as the next for clock time. Returning to the point, people live their lives on clock time more so than experienced time. It seems as though that living on clocked time is not a bad thing, but what is happening is that people are measuring time instead of enjoying the time. This is an important paragraph. Rely on it to provide support for your other claims.

Comment [9]: ? Is this a direct quote or your word choice?

Clocks do not represent time well. Time is merely an agreed upon convention that people use out of convenience. Clocks cannot express the ups ad downs of life and how time feels in those moments. Clocks cannot express the longest hours of someone's life or the fleeting moments wasted . A clock is just uniform motion that we compare other things to . We compare a car moving over one mile to how many rotations that a clock makes and other examples of the like.
Comment [10]: Why? Explain.

Through the use of clocks, humans transform the clock itself and the clock transforms the human. Clocks turn humans into machines. Clocks remove the consciousness from the person and thus leaves just a shell with an output for every input. Humans work around the clock. Humans must get things done by a certain time on the clock and it has pseudo-dominion (self imposed dominion) over humans. Humans don't have to listen to the clocks, but they do anyways. It is easier to follow something consistent than to go with the flow of life with it's ups and downs. Humans interacting with clocks transforms clocks into the center of their lives. There have been countless times where I have
Comment [11]: How? Explain this mechanism.

instinctively pulled my phone out to check the time, put it away, and have no recollection of what time I just read. It is by habit that I need to see the clock, whether or not I know what time it is. In class, I wait and anxiously stare down the clock for it to hit that blessed :50 minute point for class to be let out. The more rotations the hour hand makes on the clock, the more money I get paid at work. The clock is important in my life whether I want it to be or not. This applies to other people as well.

I concede that clocks are absolutely vital to my world, I do not deny that. Without time or clocks, science would be immeasurable, classes would never end, I would never be able to make plans with friends to meet at the right time, etc. Clocks help unify people to allow for meeting times to be accurate. This ability comes from the fact that time is an agreed upon convention. Everyone agrees that one second is in fact equal to one second, one hour equals one hour, etc. But the convention falls apart when people could use the argument that the word potato is equivalent to the item car. It doesn't matter what the word is so long as everyone agreed on it's meaning. Clocks represent time and if time varies between each person then clocks are useless. Some may argue that clocks actually are good for human nature in that it brings people together and unifies them. But if clocks are removing humans from themselves, what good is being together?

Good work, Alino. You express your points clearly, but need much more detail in creating arguments for them. The distinction you make between clock time and time experience is very important and this project is interesting. To improve: 1) engage your secondary sources in more detail by spelling out their arguments rather that just stating their claims and incorporating more quotes, 2) consider an objection to your argument and respond to it, 3) Link each paragraph back to you thesis by discussing how nature fits with your ideas, 4) Bibliography?. 17.5/20=B

Bibliography

Works Cited Fay, Brian. "Hammer Time." History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History 52.1 (2013): 91109. ProQuest. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. Ihde, Don. 2010. Embodied Technics. USA: Automatic Press.