Where did all the digital watches go?
Some of you may have noticed the slogan of TooMeta.com: Nobody Wears Digital Watches. It’s the fastest way I could think of to summarize what I see as the major theme of this website; namely, the failure of technology as savior. But it’s also an interesting point to think about. There are some people who stubbornly maintain that digital watches are infinitely superior to analog watches, and that analog watches prosper solely because of the sheep mentality of consumers, which leads them to choose status over functionality. And, to some extent, that guy in the link is right: that $22,000 unreadable watch does exist solely as a status symbol. And yes, the dials are pretty cluttered on the ‘help, my barometer had sex with a dashboard’ watch. But I think there’s more to it than that. Standards: most computer users love the existence of standards, unless they’re proprietary, except when they are usable for free, but not if Microsoft likes them. Worrying about the subtle politics of standards
