Random thoughts on DVRs and time-space
So, I’ve just figured out that digital video recorders (DVRs) are going to slightly influence the ease at which we humans, as a species, are able to understand quantum physics, particularly the Theory of Relativity.
DVRs allow you to pause/rewind/record programs. My DVR allows me to hit a 15 second button, which allows me to quickly bounce back to something I didn’t hear/see just a moment ago. Now besides helping me to be more of a couch potato, this great technology has helped introduce the concepts of 'real time' and ‘past time’ to the mass consciousness of our culture.
‘Live-real time,’ or just ‘real time’ for short, means that you watch a program as it is broadcast in the exact moment of time that you are currently living. For example, watching a TV show or an event as it happens and not being able to fast forward as there is no ‘forward’ yet. Excusing broadcast lags and all that.
If you pause while watching the show and continue viewing it later than the time which was broadcast, then you would be viewing the program in ‘past time’. Viewing in past time is fun, as you can skip the commercials, pause to go walk the dog, etc.
Now let’s say you have to go to work and can’t watch TV at the exact moment a show is broadcast. So, you record the show and watch it in past time. But, you want to ‘experience it like you were there’ and decide to not fast forward through the commercials. This would be watching a show in ‘live-past time.’
You get the idea.
So, whether people have consciously named these concepts as I have or are just planning out their TV schedules, as a society, we’re starting to think about time as less of a straight line from past through present to future. Instead, we’re beginning to understand the idea of time as being relative to the point at which it is experienced or observed. This is the basis of the Theory of Relativity, which states that measurements and perceptions are true only in relation to a given observer at a given place and time.
Q.E.D.
Gosh, sometimes you can really tell I’m a sci-fi and sociology fan, can’t you?
By the way... I'm back to LJ for a bit.
DVRs allow you to pause/rewind/record programs. My DVR allows me to hit a 15 second button, which allows me to quickly bounce back to something I didn’t hear/see just a moment ago. Now besides helping me to be more of a couch potato, this great technology has helped introduce the concepts of 'real time' and ‘past time’ to the mass consciousness of our culture.
‘Live-real time,’ or just ‘real time’ for short, means that you watch a program as it is broadcast in the exact moment of time that you are currently living. For example, watching a TV show or an event as it happens and not being able to fast forward as there is no ‘forward’ yet. Excusing broadcast lags and all that.
If you pause while watching the show and continue viewing it later than the time which was broadcast, then you would be viewing the program in ‘past time’. Viewing in past time is fun, as you can skip the commercials, pause to go walk the dog, etc.
Now let’s say you have to go to work and can’t watch TV at the exact moment a show is broadcast. So, you record the show and watch it in past time. But, you want to ‘experience it like you were there’ and decide to not fast forward through the commercials. This would be watching a show in ‘live-past time.’
You get the idea.
So, whether people have consciously named these concepts as I have or are just planning out their TV schedules, as a society, we’re starting to think about time as less of a straight line from past through present to future. Instead, we’re beginning to understand the idea of time as being relative to the point at which it is experienced or observed. This is the basis of the Theory of Relativity, which states that measurements and perceptions are true only in relation to a given observer at a given place and time.
Q.E.D.
Gosh, sometimes you can really tell I’m a sci-fi and sociology fan, can’t you?
By the way... I'm back to LJ for a bit.