Many a true word is spoken in jest.

Seldom is this better illustrated than by Monty Python's 'Life of Brian'. And the scene where John Cleese asks "How shall we fuck off O Lord?" tells you all you really need to know about religious zealotry.

But this little polemic will reference another, even greater, work of modern philosophy. And it's triggered by the current flood of 'Wearable Technology'. Or as we, with longer memories would call them, 'Digital Watches'.

Now, digital watches sprung to prominence in the '70s. They were expensive, achingly 'hip', and an obvious sign of your status & modernity. They were also, unfortunately, rubbish. And they were rubbish for several reasons.

First off, they were large and ugly. How anyone thought they'd look 'cool' while wearing one escapes me.

Secondly they ate batteries. These were the days before rechargeable everything, so there was a frequent need to replace the little disk batteries. Which weren't cheap.

Thirdly, and most importantly, humans don't have a straight-forward and exact relationship with time. To see what I mean, find someone who has just checked their watch, and ask them for the time. 99 times out of 100 they will have to look at their watch again before they can tell you. Now, this isn't stupidity, or forgetfulness: it's a matter of data types. Because when you look at your watch you see the shape of the hands, and relate them to your expectations of the day. You don't want to know that it's 20:26:42 - you're brain is quite happy with knowing that it's about half past eight. It's only when you need to tell someone else that you need to convert that into numbers so that you can vocalize the information. So time, and our relationship to it, is about as analogue as you can get: and hands sweeping round a clock face is the best method yet devised, by a huge margin, for conveying this to us.

And the work in question? The epoch-making 'Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy' by the incomparable Douglas Adams - who tells us two things:

• Firstly 'time is an illusion - lunchtime doubly so'.
• Secondly 'the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.'

You have been warned.