Technology’s wake-up call for the traditional alarm clock

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The list of things we don’t need any more grows longer with every advance in technology – but who thought the advance of time would ever herald the end of the alarm clock?

And yet when you think about it, everyone over the age of seven has an alarm facility now – except it’s on their phone as opposed to their bedside locker.

The British home store, John Lewis, recently reported a 16 per cent fall-off in the sale of alarm clocks this year, prompting their buyers to cut their range by a third.

They could probably take the same approach to run-of-the-mill cameras because the phone has that one covered too. And the market for digital recorders, in as much as there was one, might be in terminal decline for the same reasons.

But before we blame the phone for the end of the world as we know it, you need to look at the rapidly changing world of technology on more than one front.

Apparently, no one buys small televisions anymore; as recently as 2010, the average-sized goggle box was all of 36 inches – now the most popular size is 70 inches.

Which is fine if you live in a ballroom – but if this trend continues, we’re going to have to leave the curtains open in the front room and ask the neighbours can we relocate to their sitting room so that we can look at our own TV.

Equally, of course, you don’t actually need a box in the corner at all – more and more people get their fix on the lap-top or tablet as they move from room to room.

No longer does the family gather around for the Glenroe experience; now it’s every man, woman and child for themselves with earphones ensuring that inter-family communication is kept to the absolute minimum.

All of this is tough on a generation who remember when the radio/cassette player was the height of sophistication – before the original Walkman showed us the infinite power of technology.

It seemed like we had only mastered the fine art of pressing record and play simultaneously in that split-second between the singer starting and Larry Gogan uttering his last syllable, when suddenly technology took all of the effort out of it for us anyway.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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