Deconstructing Time - part 1

We're going to expand the scope of our examinations here on Technovation Talks to include dialogs on more fundamental topics related to science, technology and innovation. We will begin this new chapter in our blog by launching a discussion about Time. This dialog will investigate both current thinking and its gaps as well as the technological implications of our ever-evolving understanding regarding the nature of time.

Deconstructing Time - Part 1: An Introduction

I tend to work as a consultant - the scope of that work encompasses Information Technology, but the methodology and nature of that type of work can be applied to any problem space. In my opinion, the type of methodology we tend to use today in most IT projects is considerably more flexible (or Agile) than those used for most other professions. This wasn't always the case. From the 1950's to the 1980's Information Systems (IS) as a practice area was much more rigid. The reason why it was more rigid was the relative pace of innovation, which during that time period was substantially slower than it is today. If we were able to plot both quantity of technological change and the rate of acceleration of that change would become even more obvious why less rigid thinking was needed. Beginning in the 1990's, the pace of change reached a critical mass - IS became IT - and this lead to an explosion of jobs in the IT field and the introduction of many people who hadn't initially viewed IT as a career opportunity.  

From the perspective of this new influx of people, the attraction to this evolving field included:

• The ability to define technology.
• The ability to help define new fields of practice. 
• The freedom to think 'out of the box' - creativity is rewarded in IT now more often than it is in most other fields.
• The ability to apply IT to help redefine everything else in society. 

IT is the place to be for people who want to exercise innovation on a regular basis. I'm not saying that innovation doesn't occur in other fields, it certainly does, the difference may be in how hard one has to fight to achieve it elsewhere as compared to IT. The phenomena behind what I'm describing is not unique to recent history - it simply reflects the nature of collective consensus - in other words once key concepts are well defined, a community unites behind them. Concepts become 'institutionalized' and entry into the community (of practice) requires adherence to those concepts. Questioning the foundational concepts of the group is generally discouraged - or at the very least only permitted within restricted parameters. IT stands out today in that entry into the group is very informal and questioning of premises is tolerated because the premises or fundamental approaches are in a constant state of flux.

So, what does all this have to with Time? Well, what I'm proposing in this series of posts is to reexamine current assumptions in regards to how we view Time as a construct and to apply my IT-related methodology to that 'problem space.' This is both a theoretical and practical exercise. It's theoretical because we are challenging and hopefully changing some key assumptions and practical in that this modified world-view will have a number of practical (and maybe not so practical applications).

Disclaimer - what will follow in this series is a layman's description of the problem space; the intent is not to provide mathematical proofs but rather to illustrate conceptual alternatives. This is not altogether different than how I would approach a problem strictly associated with IT (we don't express design logic in binary format or assembly language but rather through the abstraction the design elements into conceptual or logical terms).

We will use a tailored or specialized version of our typical IT methodology - it is based on assessing topics in the context of problem space. Our problem space for this exploration is complex time-space coordinate mapping or travel. The central question is this - how does one locate an event in time/space?  In order to answer this, I've constructed an approach through the following steps:

1. Re-examination of core assumptions regarding time (or TimeSpace). The expectation is that this will lead to some redefinition of the topic matter.
2. Determine of an approach for coordinate mapping for event location. 
3. Assess current (design) patterns for travel within SpaceTime.
4. Create updated patterns for travel within SpaceTime.
5. Explore potential applications for the modified assumptions and new patterns.

Our segue into the following post is the definition of Time itself. What is it? Here's what Merriam Webster says:

Measured or measurable period. More broadly, it is a continuum that lacks spatial dimensions. Philosophers have sought an understanding of time by focusing on the broad questions of the relation between time and the physical world and the relation between time and consciousness. Those who adopt an absolutist theory of time regard it as a kind of container within which the universe exists and change takes place, and believe that its existence and properties are independent of the physical universe. According to the rival relationist theory, time is nothing over and above change in the physical universe. Largely because of Albert Einstein, it is now held that time cannot be treated in isolation from space (see space-time). Some argue that Einstein's theories of relativity vindicate relationist theories, others that they vindicate the absolutist theory. The primary issue concerning the relation between time and consciousness is the extent, if any, to which time or aspects of time depend on the existence of conscious beings. Events in time are normally thought of in terms of notions of past, present, and future, which some philosophers treat as mind-dependent; others believe that time is independent of perception and hold that past, present, and future are objective features of the world. See also geologic time, Greenwich Mean Time, standard time, Universal Time.

Other searches will trawl in many more definitions; dozens, even hundreds of them and of course many books have been dedicated to the subject. But perhaps some of these definitions are too complicated to get the topic started  so let's identify characteristics that tend to be related to Time in one fashion or another; these include:

• Time is something that is perceived.
• Time is something that is measurable.
• Time seems to be related to space.
• Time seems to be related to motion, distance and velocity.
• Time may be relative to the perspective from which it measured or perceived. 
• Time appears to be linear.
• Time has both 'local' and 'global' contexts - e.g. it seems scalable.
• Time may or may not be a physical construct.
• Time seems to break down at both the subatomic and universal scale (e.g. big bang)

The next post will take a deeper dive into the definitions of Time.



copyright 2013, Stephen  Lahanas