Why fix it if it ain't broke?

Today I wore my watch. Do any of you even still own watches? It's becoming more and more something of the past. I got my first watch (it was white, I remember) when I was 7 or 8. I insisted wearing it on my right wrist by my dad told me that it wasn't normal and wasn't going to work for a rightie (though he's not right, I do understand now, why that is the case). People bought good watches with the intent to keep them for a long time. Jon Osterman's father was a watchmaker who originally expected his son to follow his footsteps. When Jon was 16, the US drops the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. With his father being confronted with the undeniable facts of nuclear physics, he told Jon to stop studying watchmaking and turn to nuclear physics.

I bet a lot of people thought this way. It's understandable, I think, for people to desire to move away from a seemingly archaic profession. Look at farmers: there are less and less family run farms. In fact, I believe that it is ~1% of our food that comes from the "family farm". That says a lot.


Our society looks at technological advances and believed "this is the next big thing". And who would not want to know what the next "big thing" is. We all want to get in on it so that we can be the first to take advantage of it. It's usually going to make our lives easier.

But, despite all this potential for greatness, I wonder if there is something to be said for something that took many years to develop and exists for many years as status quo.