Time for a New Reality

I use my phone as an alarm and it went off at 6:30 this morning, like every morning. I got up, went downstairs, had some breakfast, looked at the clock in the kitchen and… it was 7:20. Either I lost 45 minutes somewhere or one of the clocks was lying to me.

Naturally, I'm going to assume my phone is correct, after all, it has to check in with the network from time to time and it updates the clock when it does that. It's phone company time -- practically military time, only without that pesky 24 hour format.

Except my phone was wrong. And so was Markie's. Somehow one of the towers we connect to with our phones (we both have AT&T) is 45 minutes slow. One of the towers -- not all of them, so sometimes my phone has the right time, and sometimes it's 45 minutes slow. I just don't know when.

My first reaction when I find information is wrong (time, temperature, news events, whatever) is to… check my phone. I have the whole Internet on my phone, it knows everything, and it's proven to be reliable for basics, like what time it is.

Sure, I've had those weird things like when I change time zones all my appointments change; Noon PST is 3PM EST. That's why they call my phone a 'smart phone' -- we're talking about a phone that practically understands Einsteinian physics because it knows where I am in time AND space. It's those weird, smart, things that make me trust my phone that much more and assume that what it says is real.

But when my phone is fed bad information, then I'm fed bad information. And I believe my phone as much as my phone believes the towers when it says it's 45 minutes earlier than it is.

Of course, so much of my life is based in information that I assume is correct that when something fails as fundamental as 'what time is it?' I have to question reality in general. We knew housing prices would never fall. We knew there were WMDs. We knew Cindy Lauper was WAY more talented that that flash in pan, Madonna.

We know what time it is. Don't we?