Doomsday Clock
In development
Time continues despite mixed reviews.
The Doomsday Clock is a small desktop appliance for keeping track of time, mortality, and the generally temporary nature of everything.
At its simplest, it is a clock.
It tells you the time. It tells you the date. It sits quietly on your desk and performs the basic duties expected of an object called a clock.
Then things become less reassuring.
Time, With Context
Alongside ordinary timekeeping, the Doomsday Clock can present information that most clocks politely decline to mention.
A Doomsday display keeps midnight uncomfortably close at hand.
A Mortality display takes a more personal approach, using information such as your age and life expectancy to put the passage of time into perspective.
Days lived.
Days remaining.
Projected dates.
Numbers that are perfectly ordinary until someone places them on a glowing screen six feet from your coffee.
The intention is not to create a grim little box shouting about death. The Doomsday Clock sits somewhere between useful information, dark humor, and a quiet reminder that time is actually passing.
A Desktop Appliance
This is not intended to feel like a tiny computer with menus spilling out of it.
The goal is a dedicated object: switch it on, configure it, put it on a desk, and let it do its thing.
The hardware and software underneath may become fairly sophisticated, but ideally the person using it never has to care.
More Than One Clock
Different views allow the display to move between ordinary timekeeping and the less ordinary information surrounding it.
Current development includes ideas around:
- standard clock and date information;
- the Doomsday Clock and seconds to midnight;
- personal mortality and life-expectancy information;
- configurable display preferences;
- alternate screens and themes;
- physical controls and indicators;
- small surprises, Easter eggs, and other things a respectable clock would probably avoid.
The final feature set is still being developed.
Why?
Mostly because clocks have become boring.
We surrounded ourselves with extraordinarily accurate ways of measuring time and then reduced most of them to a few numbers in the corner of a screen.
The Doomsday Clock is an attempt to make a clock feel like an object again.
Something useful.
Something a little strange.
Something a visitor notices and eventually asks:
"What exactly is that thing?"
That is more or less the desired outcome.
Want to know when it's ready? Email us at info@nightotter.com.