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"[Science fiction] is the only kind of writing that allows you to look at the world we live in and change one piece at a time."
- Frederik Pohl

Pulse-Timer  
  A watch that uses your visual cortex for a read-out device.  

You can't always get to your watch when you want to know the time, particularly when you are bound hand and foot, like Teg the Mentat Bashar in this scene:

Teg smiled amiably. "No one on this ship would survive." He clenched his jaw to key the nerve signal and activate the tiny pulse-timer in his skull. It played its graphic signals against his visual centers. "And you don't have much time in which to make a decision."
Technovelgy from Heretics of Dune, by Frank Herbert.
Published by Putnam in 1984
Additional resources -

Larry Niven has remarked that human beings will continue to seek solutions to particular problems, and that is one way to "predict the future" - so to speak. If this is true, then "What time is it?" is one of the most pressing issues facing humans.

I seem to remember that Molly, the razorgirl from William Gibson's Neuromancer, had some sort of modification to her optic nerve that put a timestamp on her visual field.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Heretics of Dune
  More Ideas and Technology by Frank Herbert
  Tech news articles related to Heretics of Dune
  Tech news articles related to works by Frank Herbert

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