A new digital timepiece has its debut on greenwichmeantime.com. ‘Liquid Time’ measures the passage of time the way ancients used to, being as well an act of visual restoration fit for today’s ubiquitous small screen.
“Devouring Time…”, the first two words in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 19 leave no room for misinterpretation. Time is not our friend and it rules us all with an unforgiving, relentless drive.
Are we truly aware of hours’ gallop? Modern clocks have a way of obscuring the passage of time, because they give the impression that time is circular. Hard to believe that many people look at a clock, think that another day has passed and then tell themselves that the number of available ones is ever decreasing.
The same 24 hours keep being replenished in some mysterious way. Even clocks that have calendars give prominence to the same number of hours and minutes. Small bits of personal time are disconnected from the big celestial clocks.
Ancient timepieces used the sun and shadows or water to mark the flight of time. Later it was sand. It was a more direct way of awakening the mind to the chronological limits of any act, between inception and completion.
What do 45 or even 5 minutes mean, for instance? They sound terribly abstract and hard to assess as a pure intellectual exercise.
How about the equivalent of 5 minutes in digital liquid flowing out of a bowl or beaker for instance?
No longer an abstraction, water is a well-defined element and in a certain quantity that becomes smaller and smaller as the end point approaches.
The new digital timepiece called Liquid Time is meant to make time palpable, like the beats of our heart. As we watch the digital water receding in its receptacle, we may create an image of every precious drop that disappears.
There is no need for mental arithmetic. It’s all there, before our eyes, a contemplation tool and an inevitable and powerful call to action before time evaporates.
In a world of deadlines, Liquid Time could help the teenager besieged by assignments to visualise and plan. Beyond school, the world of work could do with less of a guillotine delivery system and more with an awareness one.
Time is not our friend. It need not be our enemy, maybe more of a companion who walks alongside us for a while.
