In the section The Monastery and the Clock, in Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization, the clock is regarded as the key-machine of the modern industrial age. How such a machine managed to change the way we live out our existence is phenomenal. First used in seventh century monastery’s to keep a rule of order over the monks and to ensure that events take place regularly. Now the clock is an integral part of civilization. Since its creation it has prepared mankind to be compatible with future machines. But what is a clock and what does it do?
A clock is something that measures time and time in my definition is the duration of a day and the events within the day. Time is something we humans created, an artifact, to measure and keep track of the events in our day. With it we hold more value in our day and the time we have. The clock, over centuries, indeed has changed the way we view our days, our lives. The emergence of Western Civilization has been marked by the clocks abilities. It was the modeled machine that set the foundation for future machines. Machines nowadays require frequent maintenance and the ability to run alongside other machines.
This is made possible by the clock, which allowed people to interact with the machines regularly and at appropriate times. Mumford states that the clock “marks a perfection toward which other machines aspire. Without it the technology we have to today may have never been around. The clock has such significant value because it has influenced many aspects of mankind’s life. Without it, the things we value, for example, the time we get to spend with our family, would be different because we would have no idea how long or short that period was so we may not value it as much.
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Time is something I believe we value more than ever before because our time is limited in a day and in a broader sense our life span. There’s so much to do and for some there may be not much time left. Also, some people who hold money and wealth as something valuable will view time as something just as valuable. As the old saying goes, “time is money”. The cultural effects of the clock are also present in our lives. The clock and time has become such regularity that to us it is “second nature”.
Everything we do, especially in American culture, has to do with the clock or time. The amount of time we sleep to when our alarm clock wakes us up to the amount of time we work. Our generation has shifted to one that relies heavily on the clock. In a way the clock has made us somewhat mechanical in that we rise in the morning, eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time everyday. We follow the hours, minutes, and seconds of the clock with such familiarity, yet we have our own natural biological clock that sometimes seems to be ignored.
For instance, when I’m up doing homework at night, my biological clock will tell me its time to sleep but when I look at the digital clock I see that its still early in time and tell myself that its not bedtime yet. Ultimately, the clock has help build our society into what it is today. This ever-present machine today has shaped the values and actions of mankind. Without it our civilization now would not be able to function and it would be the “collapse of our entire society”. To appreciate the clock, one would just need to imagine if it were gone.
