John Robson: Do I really need a watch to tell me I'm still alive?
Getting dizzy over features we don’t understand on things we don’t need
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There’s a lot of strange stuff online. I was recently invited to join the Barack Obama fan club and asked whether I was already connected to Katie Telford. Then NBC e-hyperventilated “Apple Watch 6 is shipping now: What to know.” For once I thought “I’ve got this.” In the voice of Scrooge from those Canadian Tire ads: “Nothing.” But they told me anyway.
The news story headline added “before buying,” which again seemed to simplify matters because it’s “Don’t buy.” I haven’t worn a watch since 1987 because every third object around me tells me it is later than I think plus I have a mighty miniature computer in my pocket linked via satellites to something I don’t even know what continent it’s on that I trust implicitly when it says it’s exactly 10:51, or offers weather forecasts that change every few hours.
I hear you LOLing and OK Boomering because I believe a watch is an object worn on the wrist with a leather strap and wound by hand that tells you the time by pointing, that that thing in my pocket is a telephone etc. Whereas you tech-savvy sarcastic millennials knew before NBC mentioned it that the new Apple watch “will include a new tool to measure blood oxygen levels and an improved tool for measuring sleep.”
I hear you LOLing and OK Boomering
Gosh. If my watch did not tell me I was asleep how would I know? As for blood oxygen levels, I assume I have one because otherwise you wouldn’t need an Apple watch to tell you I was dead. I believe I’ve had one since televisions had antennas. But why exactly must I look at my wrist and see what it is now … and now … and now …?
NBC, in the person of Gideon Grudo which sounds like a Star Wars bit character but turns out to be “the NBC News commerce editor”, gushes “the new so-called blood oxygen sensor comprises four LED clusters and four photodiodes.” Remember that couple in Casablanca? No, not Rick and Ilsa. The Leuchtags, going “what watch?” “Ten watch.” “Such watch?” But why such watch?
OK, even if my body isn’t undergoing any more remarkable crises than usual, some people’s blood oxygen levels need monitoring. But “of course, if you have real concerns about your blood … it’s best to check in with a medical doctor” and, um, hope they’re not too obsessed with their latest device to observe that you have turned blue and fallen down.
Still, Grudo assures me “the new Series 6 does bring with it some interesting upgrades — and some timely features.” Why is it timely that I know my blood oxygen level? Or get an “improved tool for measuring sleep” with no more boring guessing because I’m lying down not moving but still have blood oxygen or whatever my old Apple watch would have done. (Perhaps ask in an irritatingly soothing unwoke female voice “Are you asleep?” and I’d growl “Well, I was” to Alexa, Bixby or whoever. Just kidding. I know it’s Siri. Siriously. I Googled.)
The story mentioned “base reasons to get an Apple Watch” so I started pondering base reasons why my life was as empty as my wrist without one. But wait, there’s more, as those late-night TV ads used to holler.
You also get “a countdown timer for hand-washing (clever), to encourage wearers to continue washing for a full 20 seconds.” Wow. That sure beats a second hand or some steamboats. Is there no end to progress? And does it have a new photovoltaic clustered tool to measure dry skin caused by obsessive hand sanitizing? Or must you just watch it flake off and not even photograph it with your watch because it has no camera? What a world.
I started pondering why my life was as empty as my wrist without one
As Rex Murphy reminds us, the internet offers easy access to endless information, culture and … rubbish, like Beethoven’s 5th Symphony being racist, sexist and plutocratic. But wait, there’s less.
The real problem isn’t the content of your Twitter feed. It’s the feed. The medium is the message. Like getting dizzy over features we don’t understand on things we don’t need. At least the NBC web page also offered “Best vacuums according to cleaning experts” before spiralling downward to “Windsor Singles: 3 Online Dating Sites that Actually Work,” so those mighty AI algorithms think (a) Katie Telford and I should be buds (b) I’m in Windsor (c) I would enhance a dating site.
Suddenly I doubt it’s really 10:51. And I never did figure out those “base reasons,” or what I get (other than watchOS 7 and life can begin in earnest) from this latest doodad instead of, say, the Apple Watch SE. Or the hair past freckle joke from my childhood.
Except a shiny new hypnoray that shrinks my wallet by $399 before going to work on my attention span.
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