Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992) • Hacker News Board

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#301

Post by fijiaarone » Fri, May 13, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #80

pikminguy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you're right that analog watches are better tools that's not what Adams was saying. "We all know, really, that [analog clock face] is a lot more instantly meaningful to us than 15:39" which is just wrong. Plenty of people, myself included, get more instant meaning from a digital readout.

I don't think there's anything more inherently meaningful about a digital vs analog readout, or vice-versa. They're both highly abstract representations of time, it really just depends on what you're used to. That said, every single event on my calendar, and every single communication about time I have with other people is expressed as a written (or spoken) number, not as a position on a clock face. That makes digita…

An analog clock is abstract in that it doesn’t show all the details of a globe with oceans and mountains and valleys and trees and lizards rotating and circling a distant light source with massive gravitation that appears to be arcing across the sky.

But it is a reasonable low resolution drawing of it, with some squiggly lines for reference, and arrows pointing in the approximate direction of the light source.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#302

Post by fijiaarone » Fri, May 13, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

HKH2 wrote: post #288

Beldin wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having witnessed kids learning time: they will happily give "15:39" as an answer. But if you ask them when it'll be 4 o'clock, they literally have no idea - not even of yhe direction (forward or back). I think this is Adams' point: digital watches pretend to give you information but only give you data. That's a reason to consider them silly: they make you work (translating their data to something with meaning) while…

That's not a fair comparison because you're comparing 24 hour time with 12 hour time. Granted, a digital clock won't tell you there are 60 minutes in an hour, but teaching analog time involves much more than that. For starters, you have to explain that for minutes, the numbers are in increments of 5.

What you need to do is take the numbers off the clock and start with only one hand.

Then ask them if there is more or less time (since midnight) until lunch.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#303

Post by fijiaarone » Fri, May 13, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #270

fsckboy wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

c'mon, not believable. his statement about digital time display is correct, and it strikes me that you are pretending it's not. "it's 10 till", or "5 minutes before the hour" are statements that capture the human concept of time much better than 15:52

They may capture your concept of time, but I agree with the parent. I always have to translate "5 minutes before the hour" to "3:55" in my head before I really understand what was said.

In this age of digital displays, what people don’t realize is that 3:55 is “just a little bit” before the hour — which is immediately obvious on a circular display.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#304

Post by fijiaarone » Fri, May 13, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #144

leoedin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think much like reading is abstracted to a point where the "shape" of the words conveys the meaning (and you can muddle up the inner letters without much loss of information), when you use digital clocks enough the subconscious meaning of the shape of the numbers is what you see. I don't have to do a manual conversion to understand from the 16:54 on my phone screen that I have 5 minutes until 5pm - I just "know" th…

Except you just gave up a lot of precision doing that conversion. 16:54 might be 5 minutes and 0.1 seconds or 5 minutes and 59.9 seconds. If you can get that same feel for 16:54:36 then sure, but I personally don’t.

He also lost a whole minutes precision rounding to 54 to 55

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#305

Post by fijiaarone » Fri, May 13, 2022, 1:19 PM UTC

pikminguy wrote: post #16

jawns wrote: post #7

His argument about digital watches did not age well. My kids have known how to understand a digital clock since they were toddlers, but even now, in elementary school, they require entire lesson units in school on telling time from a clock face. Beyond that, he argues that pie charts tell us more about the relationship between things than tables of numbers, and a clock face is "the world's most perfect pie chart." Bu…

I think this is more of a "different people's minds work differently" thing than an age thing. Some people who grew up in the digital age still find analog clock faces more useful. Here's a short youtube video exploring that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZArBfxaPzD8 . I think Adam's mistake was assuming the preference for analog was universal which was probably wrong even when he first wrote the joke. I think the a…

The author’s point was that technology was making people stupider. They’re being told what to believe and their data source is isolated from reality so not only are they easily fooled by those who control the sources of information, they lose the ability to process data on their own, and they do it to themselves for reasons as banal as fashion.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#306

Post by fijiaarone » Fri, May 13, 2022, 1:27 PM UTC

fineIllregister wrote: post #281

monknomo wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does - for example the portion of the hour in front of the minute hand's sweep is "in the future" whereas the portion of the hour behind the minute hand's sweep is "in the past" and the portion of the hour under the minute hand is "now". Three categories, and the distribution of the current hour's minutes between them

It's really two overlapping pie charts, each hand forming a side of a slice with an imaginary line from the center to the top forming the other side. We read them together, but to work as pie charts they have to be read separately. You can't get much useful information from the hands' relationship to each other without knowing their relationship to the imaginary up line. If I say, "The hour and minute hands are 30° a…

Imagine Douglas Adams thinking that within a single generation, digital clocks would render the majority of smart, technical people adult people to not only be unable to read a clock but also unable to grasp the idea of fractions, ratios, time elapsed or remaining, or the concrete nature of the way days occur in the physical world.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#307

Post by drewzero1 » Fri, May 13, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

bananabiscuit wrote: post #83

JaceLightning wrote: post #60

The example of digital watches is interesting. I found the digital version exponentially easier to read than the watch hands one.

Digital easier to read, but I personally think analog is easier to “feel”. I get a much larger sense of urgency when the minute hand approaches an anticipated position. And same goes for when the hour hand crawls downward to signal the end of the work day. Seeing it physically close the distance to the 6 o’clock position gives me a much better feel for how much of the day I have left than “3:24”. It really is like a…

For the past decade I've worn a series of watches that combine analog hands and a digital display, which I find to be the best compromise between anticipating the passage of time and getting a quick, accurate reading. Casio makes some pretty good combo watches, and there are a range of smartwatch faces that combine the analog movement with the digital readout.

Edit: I noticed you (and the article) mentioned pie charts, and one of my favorite smart watch faces is "Old Fogies Can't See Worth S**" by m3tropolis[0]. It's a literal pie chart showing % of the hour elapsed vs. remaining, with the hour number in the middle. I find it extremely easy to understand, but tend to use other faces when I need to know exact minutes.

[0] https://apps.rebble.io/en_US/application/558782c83ae5e507fc0...

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#308

Post by rswail » Fri, May 13, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

Adraghast wrote: post #103

coldtea wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but even now, in elementary school, they require entire lesson units in school on telling time from a clock face. I'd say that's a failure to teach them analog time as toddlers, not digital time being inherently superior.

Digital time is inherently superior. Analog time requires the extra cognitive step of translating to the numbers being represented. Digital time skips that process and shows you the numbers directly.

Teaching kids about analog clocks isn't just about telling time. It's teaching them about how gauges work.

If they can understand how the hour hand goes around, they can understand how a fuel gauge goes from Full to Empty. They can tell how a battery gauge on their iPad means they're running out of power.

Kids that age are soaking up concepts.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#309

Post by rswail » Fri, May 13, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

Melatonic wrote: post #192

jawns wrote: post #7

His argument about digital watches did not age well. My kids have known how to understand a digital clock since they were toddlers, but even now, in elementary school, they require entire lesson units in school on telling time from a clock face. Beyond that, he argues that pie charts tell us more about the relationship between things than tables of numbers, and a clock face is "the world's most perfect pie chart." Bu…

Yea I am not sure I get his argument much at all either. While I love my analog watches and wallclocks I also have digital ones. If anything I think the argument should be that the AM PM system is just ridiculous - why do we use it? I am an american but always switch all clocks to 24 hour time (if digital) and while I am completely used to analog clocks being on the standard 12 hour cycle it always also seemed crazy…

Probably because when watchfaces were invented, the hour was much more important than the minute or the second.

People wanted to look up to the town hall or church clock and see what hour it was, maybe quarter hour.

Maybe keeping it more distinct from a distance during daylight hours was more important?

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#310

Post by rswail » Fri, May 13, 2022, 2:58 PM UTC

causi wrote: post #6

‘Disused lavatory’ has been changed to ‘unused lavatory’ and I’m not sure why. As an American it baffles me that an American editor would change the word disused but not the word lavatory. One other thing. I’d rather have characters say ‘What do you mean?’ than ‘Whadd’ya mean?’ Again baffling. Whadd'ya mean is an accent, not a word choice. Changing it in text is as ridiculous as writing 50 as "fifdy" when it's an Ame…

Wasn't there a joke about a "Zebra crossing" that didn't translate?

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”

Apparently that got changed from "zebra" to "pedestrian" which entirely loses the black/white joke.