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Deconstructing The Apple Watch, As A Watch

Tim Cook and the Apple team remind us that a wearable time piece is much more than a style statement. But 500 years on, watches still represent a singular mix of status, obligation...and death.

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Latest in a series..
Johan Schloemann

Along with a new version of the iPhone, Apple has for the first time presented a wristwatch: the Apple Watch. If all goes to plan, sporting a so-called smartwatch could become a mass phenomenon some 500 years after the creation of the first wearable time device.

A reminder of just how much a wristwatch has to do with a contemporary person’s status was recently demonstrated when top German corporate manager Thomas Middelhoff’s 20,000-euro Piaget was seized among other possessions after he alleged amassed a massive debt. Stripping him of his watch was the ultimate humiliation — asking a business leader to give up his luxury time-piece is like stripping the last shirt off his back.

A wristwatch is not only a style statement, it symbolizes the economic turn man has taken that makes us all business people by showing that we are dependent on the measurable rhythm of time. Showier watches also give the impression that we have everything under control.

The very first painting in which a portable watch is depicted is not coincidentally one of the all-time most famous portraits of a merchant. It shows a man named Georg Gisze, and was painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1532, and hangs in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. The man is surrounded by money, accounting ledgers, sales contracts — and his new pocket watch, the must-have at the time, just as the Apple Watch may soon be.

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The Merchant Georg Gisze by Hans Holbein the Younger

Since the Holbein was painted, wearable watches have always been depicted in two ways: firstly, in connection to the rhythm of business life — to production, dispatch and opening times, for example – and secondly in association with the transience of time, or "Vanitas."

And indeed, this new ballyhooed smartwatch attaches itself to both. Anybody with Facebook and Amazon on their wrist submits further to the rhythm of the digital economy and communication independently of the fact that whole new etiquette issues arise since looking at one’s watch in the presence of others has long been considered impolite.

At the same time, the smartwatch, just as traditional wristwatches do, brings our own mortality closer to home. Like other comparable devices, the Apple Watch also comes equipped with a heart rate monitor and motion sensor. As a countermovement to all this, one can expect the business of expensive mechanical watches to flourish.

One of the best-loved songs of middle-class music culture was "Die Uhr" (The Clock) composed in 1852 by Carl Loewe. In it, the portable watch was a metaphor for individual life in relation to eternity. In one verse, the librettist imagines the clock stopping for good, and says that only God who created it could get it up and running again — which, as it happens, also pretty well sums up Apple’s product repair policy.

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Society

Is Disney's "Wish" Spreading A Subtle Anti-Christian Message To Kids?

Disney's new movie "Wish" is being touted as a new children's blockbuster to celebrate the company's 100th anniversary. But some Christians may see the portrayal of the villain as God-like and turning wishes into prayers as the ultimate denial of the true message of Christmas.

photo of a kid running out of a church

For the Christmas holiday season?

Joseph Holmes

Christians have always had a love-hate relationship with Disney since I can remember. Growing up in the Christian culture of the 1990s and early 2000s, all the Christian parents I knew loved watching Disney movies with their kids – but have always had an uncomfortable relationship with some of its messages. It was due to the constant Disney tropes of “follow your heart philosophy” and “junior knows best” disdain for authority figures like parents that angered so many. Even so, most Christians felt the benefits had outweighed the costs.

That all seems to have changed as of late, with Disney being hit more and more by claims from conservatives (including Christian conservatives) that Disney is pushing more and more radical progressive social agendas, This has coincided with a steep drop at the box office for Disney.

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