This is my Westclox Dialite electric alarm clock.
A reflection on a relationship withe technology
This is my Westclox Dialite electric alarm clock. I got it for 10 bucks at a thrift store in central Washington.
You set the alarm by turning a dial on the back. This rotates an indicator on the front. When the big hand reaches the indicator, the alarm goes off.
The mechanism is elegant. To set the clock, you tug on the same dial, and it shifts position, allowing you to set the time. It is a simplicity of physical components manipulated directly.
The Alarm is perfect; a simple buzzing. Annoying enough to wake you up, but not loud enough to startle you. Note: this alarm clock does not provide a selection of ringtones.
There’s a button on the top to silence the alarm. When pressed, it stays down. When the hour hand comes around to the alarm indicator again, it pops the button up without setting off the alarm.
Again, mechanical elegance. The components are mostly physical, and the mechanisms are minimal. It cleverly resets itself every 24 hours. it might be 40 or 50 years old, and it functions perfectly.
I have owned a variety of apps, alarm clocks, wake up lights, and other gadgets. Most of them don’t work the way they’re advertised, have weird, baked in settings, require some kind of subscription, or just plain broke down.
My Apple phone has an alarm clock in it. Every few months, the alarm clock changes and I lost my ringtone, or else the dials sync differently and I add an extra hour to my timers for a week until I get used to it, or it adds a patina of annoying bubbles and shadows that I have to figure out how to turn off—just another penny in the “unpaid labor turning off features I don’t want” jar.
My printer, which is also a clock, doesn’t know the difference between an error message, a notification, and a marketing opportunity—it serves me all three with equal frequency.
I’ve also owned a Loftie that tells bedtime stories and a highly configurable dawn light that can wake me up on the beach, in the desert, on a mountaintop, or the slopes of Olympus Mons.
But the Westlox has something none of those has—it never gaslights me, which is why I love it.
I want that with a radio station playing soothing night music on a timer.
Slide rules and astrolabes! I'm really not a Luddite, but there's an elegance to these things that, combined with the satisfaction of mastering the arcane skills of their operation, makes them SO appealing.
It sometimes seems like much of our current technology is aimed at recreating these old technologies, but less simply, less reliably, and less beautifully. We really don't *need* all these apps and gewgaws.
On the other hand, I'm lost without my Google calendar.