Today I saw a clock that looked like an old fashioned clock. I mean, it had an hour hand, a minute hand, and a moving sweep-second hand.
But it was actually a digital wall display of a clock. Behind the scenes, a computer was turning time into an animated image of black and white pixels, creating the illusion of a mechanical clock.
I pondered this very strange object for quite a while, not quite sure what to make of it. There was something unintentionally punk about the whole affair.
As near as I can figure out, somebody wanted the comfort of old-fashioned analog time-keeping. But they didn’t want the hassle of mechanical parts that can break or jam or otherwise stop working.
Which is all very valid I suppose, but the whole thing still seems to me like a semantic oxymoron. Sort of the time-keeping equivalent of “jumbo shrimp” or “same difference” or “pretty ugly”.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.