Computers have gone from a building-sized collection of vacuum tubes to beige boxes that fit on your desk to smartphones you can slip in your pocket. What’s next? Well, remember digital watches?
Take a look at I’m Watch, an Android-powered wrist watch that lets you “touch, drag, swipe, or pinch” the time, weather, status updates, or email. Fast Company reports on the I’m Watch, and other products including a speculative Apple offering.

Of course wrist-smartphones make us think of Dick Tracey in the Sunday funnies, but don’t forget Douglas Adams writing in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy that humans are “so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” This is illustrated later as Arthur Dent loses an arm and panics upon realizing he can no longer operate his digital watch.
To Douglas I can only say “Don’t Panic!” Even without you to brilliantly spotlight and soundly trounce the silly actions of the ape-descended life forms called Homo Sapiens, we will certainly find innumerable ways to embarrass ourselves with the new generation of digital watches.


