About a Digital Problem

It's not wrong, but that doesn't mean I don't notice it and either shake my head or grin.

I mean, I know language changes and that's fine, but some times I think the world runs ahead of the words we use to describe it, maybe just out of habit. It's a simple word, about, but I think it's not comfortable with today's digital world, which can be pretty damn exacting.

It might be just me, but I think of about as being pretty fuzzy. I'm about six feet tall, but if you were to measure me, you'd get another number. I live about five km from the ocean, it's about nine in the morning and about twenty degrees, but careful measurements would show all those numbers to be wrong.

And that's the thing.

I learned to tell time back before there were any digital watches. One of the first things I noticed when I got one was that I was unconciously mentally translating its numbers to hands on a clock to understand what it was telling me. I'd read 8:47 and picture it so that I'd know what time it was, but I also noticed something else.

If that glance at my watch came from being asked what time it was, I'd answer 8:47 and just read off the numbers. If I looked at my watch to learn the time, I'd translate the numbers and understand the time to be about a quarter to nine. I'd be less accurate, but would come up with something I could easily understand.

The same thing happened when driving. While a digital display of 38mph gave me more information, a glance at a speedometer with a needle would show me I was a tick under forty which usually was all I needed or wanted to know. The more exact number was closer to the truth, but a glance at the old dial model let me know I was going about forty, a figure that's nice and round and easy for me to understand.

It's also the way I talked. If asked, I'd say it's about quarter to nine or I was going about forty, but what's funny is how our language is now being used to talk about exact numbers while still using the old word about.

I mean, I can almost tell when someone, especially some commentator on TV, is reading from an exact digital display but continues to use our old familiar language. In the real world, in our normal lives, we use about to give an estimation about things, but I think it doesn't fit well with actual, honest answers. It seems to me a guy racing a bicycle can be going about forty or can be going thirty-eight, but not about thirty-eight.

He is going thirty-eight, not "about thirty-eight." You can tell me it's 2:27 or about 2:30, but saying it's about 2:27 just sounds silly. I think that's just lazy, using our common word followed by reading off the actual answer.

And, yeah, it kind of bugs me.