Comment on I hear phrases like "half-past", "quarter til", and "quarter after" way less often since digital clocks have became more commonplace.

• irish_link@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What do you mean if your brain works in digital time. This doesn’t translate for me and I grew up with regular clocks and wrist watches. All time is the same. A clock with both hands facing 12 is and always has been twelve o’clock. Clock face or digital clock. They give the same time. Comparing two devices that give the same information in different ways to language is absurd.

  Your comparison could work if the subject being discussed was 12 vs 24 hour time keeping. Then there is a translation between the two.

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  • Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Analog clocks lend themselves better to thinking in fractions of an hour or day, like this post is talking about, as an hour and a half day are both represented as a circle

    Digital clocks lend themselves better to thinking in terms of number of minutes and hours directly. When working numerically, fractions of 60 are generally less intuitive, and fractions of 12 often so as well. Most people who don’t work with angles often think of fractions in terms of percent, or powers of two.

    “Quarter past” kind of tweaks the brain wrong when a quarter is intuitively 25.

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    • Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      fractions of 12 are unintuitive

      Really? I’ve always found them very pleasing.

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      • MadBob@feddit.nl ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        They chose 12 precisely because it’s easy to divide!

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      • thistledown@rblind.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I wish our numeric system was base 12 instead of base 10!

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      • Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You’re on Lemmy, of course you like fractions of 12. It is a very convenient base, having so many factors, but most people don’t think like that

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    • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s also precision. I think this is the biggest thing we’ve lost is some expression of precision.

      • 11:45 from a digital clock is very precise. You expect something at exactly that time, and get more impatient with vagaries of traffic or delays or clocks that aren’t synched, or just that people aren’t digital
      • “quarter of” implies less precision. If I have to wait five minutes, you’re still not late. Regular human activity in the real world is not exact so allowing for inaccuracy is both less stressful and more practical

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  • intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Actually a digital clock with both hands pointing at twelve is not a digital clock.

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  • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    oh i think this may be a cultural thing, here in europe when we say “digital time” we specifically mean 24-hour time because “AM/PM” isn’t used here.

    It’s the difference between saying “dinner’s at seven” and “lunch ends at 13:30”

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    • irish_link@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ahhh!!! That totally makes sense. I took the comment to be about digital clocks specifically vs analog clocks. Not about the type of time keeping. Then the translation analogy totally makes sense and works! Gotta love learning new things from people. Thanks Swedneck!

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• wesker@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s inefficient is what I’m suggesting.

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  • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It is a one syllable difference, at most. Fif-teen versus Quar-ter-Past. Or Thir-ty versus Half-past. And for-ty-five versus quar-ter-till.

    But it is also about precision. If I say “Let’s meet up at 4:45” that implies a lot more specificity than “let’s meet at quarter to five”. The firmer is an exact time people should meet at and the latter is “around that time”.

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeopkvAP-ag goes into the difference between analog and digital time and what that means with thought processes. But a lot of it boils down to thinking in terms of “parts of a whole” versus “specific times”.

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    • joel_feila@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m curious why it got the name digital time.

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      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Because it is expressed as digits (numbers)

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    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      it’s not like people generally pronounce it fully anyways, it’ll come out as “qua’tr” or “quartah” depending on dialect

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      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        All of which is still two syllables?

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  • rockerface@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The most inefficient part of human brain is having to consciously process things. So going with whatever patterns you’re used to is always going to be faster

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• intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  When people report the time they aren’t reporting their internal dialogue they’re reading what it says on the display. What it says on the display is “four twenty three” not “halfway between quarter and half past four”.

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  • humorlessrepost@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    OP didn’t say anything about reading time off a digital clock.

    What about the opposite scenario of reporting the time you read off an analog clock? Would you translate to digital first?

    In your specific scenario, sure, it would require extra work to convert it, so I’d just read it as is.

    But when making plans, and especially spans between two different times, my brain thinks of time as portions of a pie chart, and I’d have to translate 3/4 to 45 minutes.

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