Time is Brief...or is it?

[gsdx]

I won't get into that 'time is relative' stuff, but technology over the past century has been able to 'freeze time' like never before. We have been able to record people from their youth to their death. That has never happened before in history.

I think people will pick their favourite 'time' from the selection presented. For example, some people may remember Sean Connery as 'Double-Oh-Seven' rather than Indiana Jones' pop.

 

[Andreus]

time is the flame in which we all burn

 

[dolphwasser]

Time is eternal. We're a living part of it for only a relative fraction of a second. If you're talking about our legacies, don't forget the dinosaur fossils that have remained for millions of years. Don't forget the mummies of the world who have been here for thousands. Don't forget the remains of human figures from Pompeii and Herculaneum that have been here for hundreds. An 80-year-old movie is nothing in the grander scale of life.

 

[slobone]

I heard a recording of Walt Whitman reading one of his poems the other day. Walt Whitman! That's pretty amazing.

 

[Andreus]

....Surely it exists even without us counting off the seconds.....

not so sure

how does it exist if there is no mind that stores information in a linear way to experience it?

what were seconds before the invention of the clock?

In arabic, a thing either exists or it doesn't... there is no past or future... that has to be infered in other ways.

Time is a function of the speed that we travel through the universe

reality is only the one monent that we currently exist in

Film merely records those moments and when we view the films, we experience the recording in the new moment...

but we do not really look back through time

it is just a constructed theory and philosophy to help us understand what our memories mean.

that is my opinion, anyway

 

[Andreus]

without life to observe and record memories, all things would simply exist as they are

i am not saying that time exists and if no one notices it then it is irrelevant.

i am saying that time is constructed by us to help understand the universe and it has no real existance

like numbers

they are not real

they are representational

you cannot touch time

you cannot elude it or manipulate it

you can only acnowledge that you have changed and the world around you has changed in a relative way

 

[ComNavFdgPk]

^ it is that whole "does a tree make a noise..." thing...

You beat me to it!!

 

[Andreus]

this is quantum mechanics and physics, guys...

have a look at this

http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/aerts/publications/2001TimeSpaceReality.pdf

 

[NedNickerson]

One of the great things about the internet and video cassettes and dvd, etc. is the ability to be able to hear and watch recordings that were made decades ago. I have vinyl albums of recordings by Caruso, Nellie Melba, and Adelina Patti. The recordings are scratchy and tinny sounding, but you do get a feeling for how impressive they must have sounded in their day.

Here's the Walt Whitman recording, reciting four lines from his poem, America:

http://www.whitmanarchive.org/audio/America.mp3

Caruso singing "O souverain! O juge! O pere!" (from "Le Cid") (age 43)

http://www.rfwilmut.clara.net/mpeg/caruso.mp3

Recently I was watching a rebroadcast of Ken Burns' The Civil War and he was talking about the amazing photographs of photographer Mathew Brady, who took so many of the Civil War photographs we are now familiar with.

Click on this link and check out the External Links for more links for photographs taken by Mathew Brady and other photographers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathew_Brady

I'm a big fan of silent movies. TMC Silent Sundays is one of my favorite programs. It's sad that so many of the great silent classics have been lost either through chemical decomposition or just through the fact that with the advent of sound, silent films were just discarded due to high costs of archiving...

Some of my favorite silent films are The Big Parade, Ben Hur, The Wind, Broken Blossoms (practically anything with Lillian Gish, come to think of it), and all the Harold Lloyd comedies.

 

[Joshua_me]

Time isn't brief, WE are.

Will all the good times we've seen in life ever come 'round again ?

Of Course.

Just not for us.

Pardon the tired hourglass 'sands of time' metaphor, but it's a good way
of representing it. If you've ever watched sand pouring thru one, it appears that the sand falls faster and faster as it begins to run out of the top portion.

It doesn't, of course, gravity remains constant. But, it's the same constant in which time seems to pass as well.

The older and older one gets, the faster and faster time seems to pass. I can remember when I was a kid, I'd judge a year's passing from one Christmas to the next....and during the first 15 or so years of my life that seemed like a LONG period of time.

These days, now that I'm seeing the Xmas trees going up in the stores already, it seems like the last holiday season was a couple of months ago.

You know where I'm going with this. (At least I *hope* you do, 'cause I don't.... )

All I know if the years are passing by this quickly in my late 30's, Lord knows what the future will bring in terms of my perception of time.

It's the same old story, try to tell a 15 year old that they'll be 30 before they even know it will just result in rolled eyes from the 15 year old.

Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.

Within you and without you, and all of that.

 

[NedNickerson]

Another thing that has occurred to me is how from the beginning of time until the beginning of the twentieth century, mankind has walked or used boats or used horses or cattle for transportation. However, in just the span of a few years, we have invented the combustible engine, and then the automobile, the jet plane, and the space shuttle. Today you can fly from New York to Paris in a few hours. You can cross the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in a few days. We are now able to send a man into orbit and bring him safely back to earth, a feat unheard of in our grandfathers' days...

 

[Rand]

I don't know what this thread is about but here I go anyway

In other words, is life brief or lengthy? )

Life is like a glass of water - is it half full or half empty ..... it really depends on how much you put into it - - - I'm trying to have mine be over-flowing.

(I'm going to go get a cookie now)

Did you bring me one?

 

[GL]

Being the nerd that I am, I read "Time is Brief..." and this is the first thing I thought of.

Picard: Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all Number One, we're only mortal.

Riker: Speak for yourself sir, I plan to live forever.

Star Trek Generations

 

[Sausy]

After going through this exhilarating thread,I can confidently say that this is time well-spent.I love these kinds of threads,and just am amazed how much technology has progressed over thew past century and a half that we can enjoy for countless generations to come in photography,the spoken word,radio,television,DVDs,motion pictures...we have a visual history unlike any other era.....our actions for good or ill as humanity imprinted for posterity.I can't quite clearly describe how it feels,just so amazing we live in such a time.More articulate renderings on this topic abound here,but just going through it...everything that can be pondered.....well,I'm gonna need a cookie too,so I'm glad you got some for everyone.Chocolate chip homemade cookies,from a time machine,yet....well ,they are a timeless pleasure!

 

[pausanias_usa]

I remember as a teenage who disliked history, I forced myself to read H.G. Wells' OUTLINE OF HISTORY.

Not only did it fascinate me, but I've been adding in the chinks since.

Given the advances in archaeology, anthropology (that primate baby skeleton recently was cool), &tc., it seems to me that I'm constantly adding then compressing the whole timeline against the backdrop of my conscious life (I recall "waking up" when about 4 or 5, and everything has been a conscious timeline since, well, with a few gaps here and there, ahem).

I'm constantly amazed about the various stages I've been through, and like to speculate about those to come -- but the old saw is true, the years go faster as you get older!

That's supposedly because your lengthened memory compresses the feeling of time passing.

 

[RationalLunacy]

What do you expect of a society whose lives are dictated by religious teachings from books written in the Bronze Age?

 

[slobone]

Some of my favorite silent films are The Big Parade, Ben Hur, The Wind, Broken Blossoms (practically anything with Lillian Gish, come to think of it), and all the Harold Lloyd comedies.

Love all of those, I'd add The Docks of New York and anything with Buster Keaton.