I recently received a spam email offering “the most qualitative” replica watches available on the market. Now, while I assume they were actually trying to say that their watches were of high quality and the copy writer simply felt that more syllables added emphasis, I would like to take them at face value.

The basic utility of your average watch is normally based strictly on how they function quantitatively. When it is four pm, you want a watch that tells you, precisely, with numbers and everything, that it is four pm.

Presumably, qualitative watches behave differently. They aren’t constrained by the limited, linear numerical framework of quantitative time. I assume you would get approximations, impressions, perhaps just a feel for what time it is. Perhaps the watch would just tell you it’s fourish, or mid-to-late afternoon.

Or even better, it might give you a feeling for what time is seems like. For example it might tell you that it’s late afternoon but that it feels earlier. When you’re at work, it might tell you that it feels like the middle ages.

Or maybe the watch doesn’t have any particular feelings on the time at all. Maybe the focus group it has connected to via satellite doesn’t really care what time it is and just showed up for the free coffee and bagels.

Regardless, I want a qualitative watch.