[barryfandango]

The human experience of linear time predates clocks, yes. But before clocks, we used natural phenomena as trigger events for our activities - the rising of the sun to wake up, the blooming of a certain flower to start plowing the fields. When, exactly, do we start plowing? At "flower bloom" o'clock.

But you can't coordinate larger activities with these natural phenomena, which are regional and also variable. So instead we invent a system of trigger events that are not tied the natural world. We call the event the second, and it happens whenever this device says it does. The clock, and the second-events it produces, are our invention. That's what I got, anyway :)

[wongarsu]

The entire point of leap seconds is to make sure that our system of time keeping stays tied to the natural world. The same is true of leap years and time zones, but leap seconds are very direct in that they are introduced as way to always keep our time keeping system within one second of the planet's rotation, no matter how irregular the latter is.

[gtsop]

> So instead we invent a system of trigger events that are not tied the natural world

Not quite, all measurement is tied to the natural world, we've just been moving away from less stable and predictible events to more deterministic.

Yes we have made up units of measurements that maybe arbitrary, but still tied to the physical world and dependent on natural properties.

Nevertheless, it felt like the article was trying to prove there is something inherently evil with clocks that has been under our radar for ages, which is silly. And even if that was true (clocks being strictly tied to constructs of power)... this still doesn't mean that "clocks produce time". Maybe the title is just wrong?

[MikeDelta]

Indeed, a day is still a day and a year a year, even if we split a minute into 60 seconds. It is all tied to the sun (stars) and the place of our planet relative to it.

We have leap years and seconds to keep our time synchronized with the universe (because of small round-off errors, if I may call it like that).

[bulleshah]

I just made this account to respond to this criticism. Let me see if I can do that :-

> Not quite, all measurement is tied to the natural world, we've just been moving away from less stable and predictible events to more deterministic.

That is very true, but measurements are not natural world. Just to take an example from software world, ability to solve leetcode questions is tied to general software engineering ability, but it would be a mistake to say that it is the ability. Leetcode style questions do not sit at the root of software engineering ability, its at best an important branch of the tree.

Note that the problem here is not with a good measure or a bad measure of software engineering ability. The question is more about what it means to be a good software engineer, and thats not an objective question, thats a moral question and we will all disagree on an answer.

Note that if time was just part of natural sciences like Physics, then we could come up with one theory and test it out. But time is not just a laboratory thing, its also a tool that humans use. And that makes it more than a natural science question, its also a humanities question, just like leetcode and iq tests are.

> Nevertheless, it felt like the article was trying to prove there is something inherently evil with clocks that has been under our radar for ages, which is silly. And even if that was true (clocks being strictly tied to constructs of power)... this still doesn't mean that "clocks produce time". Maybe the title is just wrong?

Every technology has an ideological bias to it, but technologies will try to convince you that they are neutral. A very good example would be how you say "inherently" evil. Actually, clock has both inherent evils and inherent goods. You're already aware of the goods and the article pointed out the evils. This has not been hidden and such technological criticism can even be found in Plato's works. More accurately, for clocks specifically, Lewis Mumford gave the thesis the book expands upon in 1930s and he lists out references in his work about folks who have pointed out these things even earlier.