I recently lost my FitBit Force in a Canyoneering mishap (Joel did say “Are you sure you want to bring your FitBit into the canyon?”) and now I’ve been downgraded to a FitBit Flex.
After many years of not wearing a watch, I’m finding myself yearning for my Fitbit Force and it’s “killer” feature: the watch.
I grew up with a watch. I taught the first few years with a watch. But somewhere along the way, the phone in my pocket and the ever-present time in the upper right-hand corner of my computer screen replaced the need for a watch. Or so I thought …
Since my loss of the Fitbit Force (which would helpfully provide the time if you tapped it), I have found myself missing a watch:
- in the mornings, when I am too blind to see what time it is on the clock across the room
- at dinner with others, when it is too rude to pull out a phone just to look at the time
- on a run or walk with the dogs, when it was easy to check my wrist, but too difficult to unpack the phone from a waistband
I found myself regularly checking my Force in airports, but it was relatively useless when traveling (too difficult to change the time). Â I hope that when Fitbit brings the Force back, it is able to reset its time by syncing to the time on the phone it is paired with. That would make it even more awesome.
Of course, you might tell me to just wear a watch, but I’m already wearing a Flex and don’t want to be one of those dorks wearing what appears to be two watches (though I predict this fashion coming back as we all try to make sense of the different feature incompatibilities of various wearable technologies).
When I was a college instructor, my reliable black & white laser printer was one of my most well-used technologies. Now it just sits and collects dust (along with my CD and DVD collections). While the world does seem to be moving away from “things” and towards online services in many industries (music, journalism, movies, education), there are places where the technology pendulum seems to be swinging back to practical things (like the watch).
I wonder if we’ll find the same thing happens in education? Right now online education has been “discovered” by the elite universities and is all the rage (ahem, MOOCs). Maybe in 5 years, small in-person class sizes will be back in vogue.
Isn’t it funny how the perceived usefulness of different technologies changes over time?
Note: I solved this problem with the FitBit Alta, which I love.
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