What does counterclockwise mean?

Doing a NineShift keynote in Rutherford County, North Carolina, this month, I was retelling how cell phones are replacing watches (see "Because it's not news", January 3, 2006 entry).
One participant noted that her daughter no longer knows how to tell time using an analog clock (big hand on the.....).

Then my host Fred Bayley noted how people soon will not know what the instructions "clockwise" and "counterclockwise" mean.  Wow. What will we use to replace those terms?

(photo of Fred Bayley)

Comments

[Rich Loken]

Rotate Right and Rotate Left.

[Rick Wetherill]

Turn it to the right or turn it to the left works for things that rotate around an axis. When the axis is invisible or simply implied, we may run into difficulty. Port and starboard? If we factor in the difficulty of directional vectors (bandits at 10 o'clock!), I suspect we may all end up with dimensional cues or radius shorthand like "90-wise" or "270-wise" and "bandits at three hundred!"

[David J. Reilly]

Look at the money it will save. Just how many watches are you supposed to own? Watches are everywhere, from drug stores to dept stores to the flea markets and jockey lots. We will have a lot of empty counter space. What will be placed in those empty spaces in the 21st Century?