I think I’m going to pass on the Apple Watch. Sure my initial reaction was that of abject undulating awe but it has since occurred to me that the list of things I have in common with my father is ever dwindling. At present my wristwatch is the final thread connecting not just my father and I, but generations that preceded as well. I’m fearful that as I turn over more and more of my life experience to electronics, these already tenuous connections will disappear altogether. I have spent years building a watch collection and an Apple Watch while unquestionably elegant in it’s sophistication would render those timepieces obsolete in one fell swoop. It seems I’d be forced to cede far more than a few inches of real estate on my wrist.
Fully submitting to the ultimate in connectivity I’d surrender not only the routine task of timekeeping to the already gorged electronic gods but further disengage the cogs of history from the last mighty analog bastion in our otherwise digital existence. These electronic gods have hungrily feasted on our inconveniences for years as we’ve willingly fed them task after mundane task. We’ve nearly programmed away the burden of experience and I fear we are heading for a singularity. We’re standing before the great black iMonolith and hearing the nearly imperceivable whispers of some distant future race hidden behind the soft static hiss of convenience and beckoning us to evolve beyond our capacity, to just surrender and plug in…
For now these few square inches of sacred real estate will remain a place of honor for these artifacts of antiquity that represent old world craftsmanship and perhaps the stubbornly ticking vestige of my ancestry.
Mannino Acid 