A new watch called Tikker claims to have created a way to calculate
approximately when, according to its creators, a person is likely to
die, and then to input that date into a wristwatch. The idea is that
being constantly reminded of his or her own mortality will nudge the
wearer to live life to the fullest.
“Tikker is a wrist watch that counts down your life from years to
seconds, and motivates you to make the right choices,” the company,
which is a Kickstarter-project-turned-real-thing,
writes on its site. “Tikker will be there to remind you to make most of your life, and most importantly, to be happy.”
Happy, I tell you! Quick, you only have 57 years, 6 months, and 23 seconds left! Get happy, for Chrissake!
Tikker was created by Fredrik Colting, a 37-year-old Swede who previously gained notoriety by writing an unauthorized sequel to
The Catcher in the Rye under
the pseudonym John David California. J.D. Salinger sued Colting — his
lawyers called the book a "rip-off pure and simple — and a
judge blocked its publishing in the U.S.
If there’s one thing you can say about Colting’s newest venture, it’s
that it’s definitely original. First, Tikker users fill out a
questionnaire about their health habits, risk factors, and age. That
information generates the time, down to the second, that the wearer has
left until they leave this mortal coil.
Then, start the countdown! Just like on a
time bomb majestic rocket ship blasting off to heaven.
The watch has helped the “Tikker team” create a bucket list, which
includes items like, “Perpetually lay on a beach,” “Quit my job and
watch every movie I always wished I had watched.” And of course, “Tell
the girl at the coffee place that I love her.”
Hey, Coffee Place Girl, would you like to spend the next 473,354
hours with me? We’ll be watching old movies on the beach. Also, it's
looking more like 60 hours now because I can no longer buy food since I
quit my job.
It’s not an entirely bizarre idea, though. We tend to value things
that are scarce, and death is, after all, a scarcity of life. Thinking
about death can
make us appreciate life more, and it
can also make us
into better people. For example, when researchers told subjects to
imagine dying in an apartment fire, and then asked them a series of
questions, the participants showed less greed, more spirituality, and
more gratitude.
But if you’ll bear with me for a just a few of your remaining 28.4
million moments, there are a few caveats. Insurance and retirement
companies already use “
death clocks” that aim to calculate longevity, but there’s evidence that their estimates
vary widely, even for the same individual, and there’s
a 50 percent chance you’d outlive your deadline. There’s of course also a chance that,
like Narcissus, you will become so distracted by your Tikker’s elegant beauty (or actuarial precision) that you’ll get hit by a bus.
And an idea called terror management theory suggests that because we
fear death, and death is inevitable, we use self-esteem and positivity
to cope with the crushing reality of our finite existence. So when we’re
primed to think about death, we actually hew more closely to our
pre-existing beliefs and behaviors.
One study
exposed smokers to warning labels centered on death — and the smokers
with high self-esteem only thought more favorably of smoking after
seeing the warnings.
The first
Tikkers was ship in April. And while you can’t put a price on the icy breath of your impending demise, one watch will set you back $59.
‘It’s
really sad because he was not born normally and has scaly skin all over
his body, similar to being severely burnt, from the sole of his feet up
to his head. If the boy doesn't moisturise or soak his skin in water,
his body would shrivel and harden up like a sculpture and he won't be
able to move. If he leaves it unattended for too long, he won’t be able
to speak because the wrinkles inside his mouth would go hard and it
would dry out all his blood in his body.' 
