Mechanical Anarchronistic Marvels and Modernity

Mechanical gears, levers and springs are physical and something easy to wrap one’s head around. A modern wrist computer has more compute power and communications capability than supercomputers of previous eras, and instantly access to vast data stores that span the globe, that can be queried by speech. The software that run them has been built on the shoulders of millions of giants that span decades. What they do is difficult for a non software or hardware engineer to appreciate… not appreciating the complexity or understanding make them easier to disdain and distance. Their remote complications are fueled by weather stations around the world, stock exchanges, airline tracking servers, music database servers, news alert servers etc. while their internal complications are based on accelerometers, magnetometers, gps satellite communication mechanisms, oximeters, pulsimters, all carefully optimized to draw very little power and fronted by user friendly software. Enough to drive one crazy 😉. Oh and implement network time protocol to synchronize correct time with distant cesium decay atomic clocks, while compensating for network latency due to speed of light communication limitations

Mechanical gears, levers and springs are physical and something easy to wrap one’s head around. A modern wrist computer has more compute power and communications capability than supercomputers of previous eras, and instantly access to vast data stores that span the globe, that can be queried by speech. The software that run them has been built on the shoulders of millions of giants that span decades. What they do is difficult for a non software or hardware engineer to appreciate… not appreciating the complexity or understanding make them easier to disdain and distance. Their remote complications are fueled by weather stations around the world, stock exchanges, airline tracking servers, music database servers, news alert servers etc. while their internal complications are based on accelerometers, magnetometers, gps satellite communication mechanisms, oximeters, pulsimters, all carefully optimized to draw very little power and fronted by user friendly software. Enough to drive one crazy 😉. Oh and implement network time protocol to synchronize correct time with distant cesium decay atomic clocks, while compensating for network latency due to speed of light communication limitations

To the average person (me and I'm sure many many others) high tech electronics might as well be witchcraft. People can manipulate the devices but have no concept or much concern about how they actually work. I can't explain this to anyone correctly, but if I print your response here and keep it with me, then maybe I can.

Lately, I feel like certain technologies are only invented to serve others, not us the owners of the pieces.

Changing the interface of your phone camera just as you got used to the last damn change to the interface. A new keyboard layout on your new laptop. A touchscreen in your car where the one setting you want is in the 4th submenu; oh and not while the car is in motion. A switch to a new CRM that has 1/4th the cost but 1/8th the functionality of the previous.

I want something I can rely on not changing at the whim of some stuffed suit who wants a 'killing of the golden goose' 20% profit instead of the healthy 12-15%.

Mechanical watches are that reliable piece of tech. Keep it wound and you'll be just fine. Quartz is better accuracy, sure; but based on personal experience, the battery can & will die at the most inopportune time. Solar is great, but it also can die when least expected. Atomic/radio controlled? What happens when the signal goes down? Sure, it's a quartz/solar, so not all that inaccurate. However, if the signal has been down for some time, batteries/capacitors might be in scarce supply.

With a mechanical watch, I can see it working from the back as well as the front; and there's just something beautiful about an oscillating balance wheel & moving gear train doing it's 700-year old dance of showing the time of your life.

A mechanical watch reminds me that Man, -at the very beginning of the Renaissance- was still able to design, engineer and build one of the most ingenious devices ever conceived.

A mechanical watch reminds me of what Man is capable of when he decides it's worth it to try.

Great stuff, and good writing as well. I especially enjoyed paragraph 2: "Changing the interface, etc. etc."

I favor quartz over mechanical, although I have both. Any Seiko with the 7n42 quartz movement will give you a couple of weeks' warning when the batteries are running down. But as you stated, what if batteries are not available? This thought absolutely never entered my mind when I bought any of my quartz watches, but in my defense, in modern-day America it never should have. Now, just a few short years later in 2023, we have cracks and even breaks in the infrastructure, and can anybody say for sure that a slightly obscure battery will always be available?

I would put it forth that Convenience is the actual dragon, or the actual new god, and not technology, because technology is almost always the slave to Convenience. Almost every technological advance is made so things will be 'easier'. And too much Convenience will get us, long before too much adversity will.

What you have written is a very clear case for mechanical watches. Many many good statements here but this is my favorite and I think the best:

"I want something I can rely on not changing" (italics mine).