RECOMMENDED READING: Why this tech CEO thinks his watch is more modern than his smartphone

Nick Kenyon

How could a mechanical wristwatch be more modern than an smartwatch? As any high school debater will tell you, it depends how you define your terms, but that is exactly the question Jason Fried, the Founder & CEO at Basecamp, asked in a recent blog post.

His argument? Well, it all boils down to how something modern should age. Should something modern ever be designed with planned obsolescence in mind? Or is something truly modern when it is designed to last, offering its peak performance indefinitely and as long as it’s maintained? Has the word modern been hijacked by consumerist capitalism where the newest thing is implicitly better than its predecessor, before itself being surpassed by another update?

Fried poses the question about his watch and his phone, one which will last indefinitely and the other which will be useless in a few years:

“But sometimes I wonder which one is more modern. 

The one in my pocket can do more, but only for a limited time. And then it can’t do anything. It dies unless it can drink electrons from a wall through a cable straw for some hours every day. And in a few years it’ll be outdated. In ten years it might as well be 100 years old. Is something that ages so fast ever actually modern? 

And then there’s the machine on my wrist. It’s powered entirely by human movement. No batteries, no cables, no daily dependency on the outside world. As long as I’m running, it’s running. And as long as one person checks it out once a decade, it’ll be working as well in 100 years as it works today. It’s better than modern. It’s forever.”

You can read his full post right here.