Time

Time’s a bitch, eh?

Technology changes fast, people change slow

truth.

There is a lonely absurdity in the idea of racing against the clock at the end of time,

Jenny Odell • Saving Time

This feels painfully right

In other words, the faster you try to change, the more likely you are to backslide. The very pursuit of rapid change dials up a wide range of counteracting forces which are fighting to pull you back into your previous lifestyle. You might be able to beat equilibrium for a little while, but pretty soon your energy fades and the backsliding begins.

James Clear • The Paradox of Behavior Change

Slow changing humans is a feature not a bug.

Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and by occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.

Stewart Brand • Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning

both forms needed in order to integrate noise and then determine signal over time.

I see time to be directly linked to attention. You can fuse with your surroundings (archaic time), lock into one object (magical time/flow/addiction), orient around events, narrative or cycles (mythical time), or obsess over budgeting hours and minutes (rational time). The idea of escaping rational time and realizing “I am time” is liberating, and

Coordinated time is only necessary because of the systems we’ve created.

Ideas related to this collection