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Is time speeding up?

Started by Brundle-Fly, January 10, 2012, 08:15:04 PM

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Brundle-Fly

Nothing profound here but yesterday, my eleven year old nephew remarked that 'the years are flying by'. I repeat he is eleven years old.

My summers of the 1970s seemed to really drag when I was his age. Sitting in fields, sucking on a blade of grass, doing absolutely fuck all. Boring car journeys took an eternity. Walking the three miles to school, day in, day out, alone in my thoughts.
Then, I thought about it, he is always occupied with some activity whether it is listening to his ipod, playing games on his phone or DS or looking up Lego Star Wars on his Dad's computer. He's not completely inert, his Mum has him doing guitar lessons, swimming club, golf sessions, football practice, keeping up with what all the other kids in his class are doing. And the amount of homework he has to do? Ai-yi-yi. He barely gets to play with the toys he received this Xmas because he's always doing something

I suggest the '00s flew by, like every other twat says. But seriously, is it because there is too much distraction now? I feel like all my time is being hoovered up into screens of various sizes. Train journeys now take seconds with a good phone app or film on the ipad. The hours that pass spent on X Box without even realising. Today, my gf has been watching YouTubes, DVDs and TV nearly all day on her day off.

The time elapsed I've spent typing this shit has eaten thirty three minutes of my life. 

Easy to burn time doing nothing much. I been off today feeling shit and the whole day has been a blur of crap

this is why I hate the internet, just an addictive distraction for the most part but I cant help myself, didn't even feel like I could exercise or meditate or read today just watching shit reading shit.

You gotta do some things to create markers in your life, give time a sense of passage, gotta put distance between activties. this is one of the problems with work really, just melds into one unless you put more in to break up the routine, change it up. I usually walk on the other side of the road or take a different route if I'm going somewhere familiar, stimulates the mind and you don't lose so many minutes and hours.

These days, it's all distraction, shallow engagement

Glebe

It does feel like a time funnel opened up at the end of the Noughties, sucking us into a void of new discovery, while the voices of old, backward people complained about these new Interwebs.


Brundle-Fly

Tags. Ouch.

God, I hope I don't sound like a crap Rick Wakeman. It was just an observation.

biggytitbo

Time is like The Goonies 2 and Ed Ball's charm - it does not exist.

Big Jack McBastard

Cave paintings were just very slow, primitive, image boards.

"Eat the brains to get the power!" - An ill informed gentlemen standing next to large cooking pot (probably).

Now we know we shouldn't eat them to get the power, talking kind of works, writing can be better or worse, film yadda yadda, it all depends on the state of mind when we give or absorb the information, now we can (sort of) control all the previously available methods and when we see what others have done or are doing. Not to mention the fact that it's just jetting bigger and better and shitter all the while.

Humans want the contents of each others heads, even the horrible stuff, especially the horrible stuff, I reckon we'd do well out of a hivemind, yeah you might not initially want all and sundry knowing everything about you, every secret and repulsive thought laid bare, but you can be pretty damn certain that seeing the contents of everyone elses nut-job minds would absolve you, or at least put you a fair way down the kill list.

Now, we *just* need to get a Matrix knocked up and figure out a way to port our minds into a snazzy bit of reliable kit and we can pretty much tell mortality to fuck off. Just as long as the inventors of both are beardy scientists with no other motive other than trying to look big and clever.

Then we can give up all this 'time' nonsense.

mobias

Quote from: The Boston Crab on January 10, 2012, 08:25:04 PM
Easy to burn time doing nothing much.


Yeah agreed. I got home from work at 6pm had my dinner, put a washing on and farted about online for a bit and all of a sudden its a couple of minutes before 10! I remember the days when i would get home from work and the evening would stretch out infront of me like a wonderful void of opportunity and freedom, I'm sure those days were only a couple of years ago.   

23 Daves

Argh, I wish I could find a link to this now, but there's actually a scientific theory that your brain slows time down when it's encountering unfamiliar or challenging situations - purely to get a better sense of the details - and speeds up when you're constantly doing more of the same old same old.  This is why when you start a new job three or four months can feel like a long time, whereas in a job you've had for years with very few changes to your routine, time can whizz by.  Also, it explains why time goes more quickly when you're 40 than when you're 4, purely because as a forty year old your brain isn't trying to constantly make sense of new data.  Therefore, if you want to feel like you've lived for a very long time, the best thing to do is to give yourself new challenges and puzzles. 

The Internet could of course be partly to blame, being something which provides information quickly and easily without much effort or thought being exerted by the user.  In the days when we actually had to think about who we were going to find something out from, or where we'd need to go to sort something out, it's possible our brains would have slowed down to accommodate the thought processes.

This is just a hypothesis, I don't think it's been conclusively proven yet - but Brian Eno is always going on about it.  And if correct, the answer to the original question is "Yes, time probably is speeding up.  Not necessarily for everyone, but certainly for you".

buttgammon

Quote from: 23 Daves on January 10, 2012, 10:03:40 PM
Argh, I wish I could find a link to this now, but there's actually a scientific theory that your brain slows time down when it's encountering unfamiliar or challenging situations - purely to get a better sense of the details - and speeds up when you're constantly doing more of the same old same old.

That sounds about right to me. A little bit trivially, time always goes very slow when I'm on holiday in a new place. There was one particular time when I hadn't been abroad for a few years and then went to Greece for a week. It was a great holiday but it seemed to go on forever, to the extent that by the end of it, I felt as though I had lived there for a long time. It's all about taking the time to adapt to new surroundings so you can learn to cope with the unfamiliarity and take the time to explore the new areas of things. Perhaps it's because we tend to be more active in new or different situations as they drag us out of the same old rut and force us to do new things.

BlodwynPig

Yes, 1 week on holiday seems like a lifetime, 1 week at home or work is a mere tick and a tock.

EDIT: As Buttgammon pointed out, some milliseconds ago.

Brundle-Fly

Einstein quote.

'When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity!'

Or torture.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I experienced time slowing down once when someone hoofed a football at my nuts. Unfortunately my reactions didn't speed up to match my perception, so all I could do was watch as my gonads were smashed.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Time perception is bullshit. The only reason any of us observe the clock is because there's always some deadline whereby our freedom ends.

Icehaven

Maybe it's just that there's more to do now, so it feels like there's less time to do it all. When there was only three channels, and you mainly saw the same people you'd known all your life, and went to the same places every weekend or on holiday, then it probably dragged, but now you've got to find time to go eveywhere and do everything and then post it on the internet, or be made to feel like you're missing out.

HappyTree

Quote from: 23 Daves on January 10, 2012, 10:03:40 PM
it explains why time goes more quickly when you're 40 than when you're 4, purely because as a forty year old your brain isn't trying to constantly make sense of new data

You might like to read Flow and Finding Flow by the most unpronouncable author in the world, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It has some very interesting and beneficial ideas about how best to use one's time and "get in the zone" to fully engage your attention.

And this video from TED talks is very interesting in that it suggests babies are permanently in this flow state. It's apparently a natural developmental stage.