Complex Numbers

Sounding the Alarm

Oh man. I'm bracing myself for a whole lot of anti-human sentiment today. I really hope I'm wrong, but that's how it works when you're a pessimist: either you're right, or you're pleasantly surprised, and I'll take either one.

PROMPT July 11th

Imagine what the world would be like today if humans had never discovered/invented _________ (fill in the blank).

alarm clocks

Wow, what a wonderful world that would be, eh? No worries about not getting enough sleep, everyone chill about people getting places whenever they feel like it. I think if more people got the proper amount of sleep -- as defined by one's own particular circadian rhythms -- there'd be a lot less anger and conflict, and a lower level of general grumpiness.

The coffee industry would be practically nonexistent, but I don't care.

I know there are good reasons to keep things on a schedule to maximize cooperation among humans, but really, what's the cost? Also, it's more tempting to go to bed later and not get enough sleep if you know for sure that some shrill ringing or beeping is going to disturb you out of a perfectly nice dream so that you can go do something you don't really want to do in the first place.

No, if we didn't have alarm clocks, I think more people would pay attention to going to bed at whatever time they need to in order to get enough sleep, rather than letting the alarm (and then caffeine) take care of things.

Of course, I say this as someone who was ruled by alarms for many years, and now only rarely has use for one. But that just means I can speak to the difference.

In reality, of course, if the alarm clock didn't exist, someone would have to invent one. And all of our inventions are interconnected; you can't just take one out of the picture and work around the hole that would create.

Except maybe those ugly-ass big-head figures. Funko Pops or whatever they're called. I'll make an exception for them; the world would unarguably be better off without them, and we'd never even notice the difference.

Of course, I had to think for a while before coming up with "alarm clocks." So many inventions, so many discoveries, and so few of them either clear benefits or obvious Bad Ideas. Most things are a mix of the two, just like most humans. So I hope we'll be around for a while to discover and invent more things, and none of them will be perfectly good or perfectly evil, but most of them will be perfectly interesting. I'm just sad I won't be around to see it.