The Art of the Now
The book An Infinity of Little Hours, about an ancient and unchanging order of monks, has one monk discussing God's perception of time as being "one eternal now."
And we know that for many tribal people, the concept of linear time is meaningless: when incarcerated, native Australians would pine and die, feeling that the "now" of their imprisonment would last forever.
So what about this concept of "now?"
Since stumbling on this factoid, I've been quizzing everybody I know: "In terms of duration, what is 'now' for you?"
This mainly serves to make people look at me as if I've grown yet another head.
But it turns out to be a legitimate question.
Neuroscientists have determined that "now" exists between approximately 30ms and 3 seconds. Put in its most accessible way, if you tap on a drum, for example, people will have difficulty distinguish taps that are less than 30ms apart, and therefore will consider them a single tap; taps between 30ms and 3 seconds apart will be perceived as happening "now," and taps greater than 3 second apart will be perceived as happening at different times - "then" and "now."
This has become of increasing interest to researchers of all kinds, because technology has enabled us to, more and more, process more and more of the "now" in our day to day lives. Of course, as pointed out at the beginning of this article, the very notion of "now" versus past and future presupposes linear time, but we'll leave that alone for now.
One of the best ways to illustrate the increasing significance of "now" to to think about Twitter: users are able to share a 140-character slice of "now" with friends. "Right now I'm listening to this music." "At this moment, I discovered an interesting item on the Internet." "Here is a photo of where I am right now."
The power of this really came home to me recently when my home town (Syracuse, NY) experienced an earthquake. When our office realized what was happening, we checked out the Internet for confirmation and a report. We were on the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake report; we were looking for news updates. I happened to be on Twitter, though, and while the other, standard reports were slow, within second of the event beginning, tweets were popping up that confirmed the quake and reported its magnitude!
Now, granted, legitimate venues have to confirm sources before they report, which takes time and slows the cycle.
But, in a way, that's the point. More and more of us have access instantaneously to information - unfiltered information.
It's unquestionably game-changing.
There are several websites that track Twitter trends. One of them TrendsMap, is particularly effective because it displays trending topics of conversation by rank (size and darkness of font), as well as geolocation.
I can't find any specific information about thresholds - what constitutes a significant enough number of tweets to get on the map, or to warrant a larger, darker font? Needless to say, topics tend to be clustered around larger cities, but you can zoom in on your location, or simply select "my location" from the toolbar (the application uses your Twitter registered location to identify your location). (Amusingly, the topics for my location the day I write this are "thunder" and "lightning." Weather. How original for Syracuse, NY!)
Personalizemedia.com recently quantified the new density of now: in the last three minutes, we're told, 90,000 tweets were published; 74 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube; 7000 images were uploaded to Flickr; 4.8 million searches were performed on Google; and 500 million emails were sent.
That's a lotta info.
And we're told that only 20% of the world's data is actually "structured" data. That is, data that can be easily processed - stuff like ocean temperatures, or (as above) how many images were uploaded to Flickr in the last three minutes.
The rest is unstructured data for which it is difficult to understand the meaning. So, in the case of most of that information quantified above, what does it mean that the hot topic for Syracuse tweets on July 16, 2010, was thunder? There are so many variables: who tweets (demographics)? Does it matter that July 16, 2010 was a Friday? And of course, there was a thunderstorm that particular morning. Would the same tweets have occurred in Philadelphia, given the same day of the week and a thunderstorm?
Here's an interesting app for the iPhone: it's called "Glow." It's a mobile application (this is a category of app that relies heavily on your location for its usefulness) that tracks how you and others "feel" on any given day, in any given location. Where are you, what are you doing, and how do you feel? A street view provides augmented reality (you look at the world around you through your iPhone camera, and the app layers information onto it: in this case, other Glow users who happen to be in your vicinity (as well as their reported emotional state!). (Eek! Stay away from that guy - he's in a terrible mood!)
Tweemotional reports on the emotional trends on Twitter. At the moment I checked the site, Tweemotional reported that the emotional state of Twitter was mostly EXHAUSTED, followed by: angry, anxious, ashamed, bored, cautious, confident, confused, depressed, disgusted, ecstatic, embarrassed, enraged, exhausted, frightened, frustrated, guilty, happy, hopeful, hysterical, jealous, lonely, lovestruck, mischievous, overwhelmed, sad, shocked, shy, smug, surprised, suspicious. Welcome to TGIF!
Needless to say, there are any number of other tracking apps that will check news mentions, influencers, even people's opinions, in a real-time fashion. Of course, it goes without saying that this information is, at least for the time being, highly demographically skewed to users of the media that produces the trackable information. But if FaceBook's quick adoption by the, ahem, "older" crowd is any predictor, more and more of us will be participating in the activities that provide this real-time information as time goes by.
The actual usefulness of all this remains to be seen. For example, we already know that reporting election results in eastern states can have an effect on voting patterns in western states; what will infinitely more information in an infinitely faster timeframe do to any of the decisions we make all the time?
Marketers are salivating, of course; political parties are definitely on this bandwagon; news operations are interested, wary, and frightened all at once; the rest of us are just jumping in and muddling around, treating the whole thing as one part magic, one part tech/work, and one part amusement park.
The whole merging of time, location and activity puts me in mind of a question my son used to ask me when he was about two and I was going to go somewhere without him: "How home are you gonna be?"
And we know that for many tribal people, the concept of linear time is meaningless: when incarcerated, native Australians would pine and die, feeling that the "now" of their imprisonment would last forever.
So what about this concept of "now?"
Since stumbling on this factoid, I've been quizzing everybody I know: "In terms of duration, what is 'now' for you?"
This mainly serves to make people look at me as if I've grown yet another head.
But it turns out to be a legitimate question.
Neuroscientists have determined that "now" exists between approximately 30ms and 3 seconds. Put in its most accessible way, if you tap on a drum, for example, people will have difficulty distinguish taps that are less than 30ms apart, and therefore will consider them a single tap; taps between 30ms and 3 seconds apart will be perceived as happening "now," and taps greater than 3 second apart will be perceived as happening at different times - "then" and "now."
This has become of increasing interest to researchers of all kinds, because technology has enabled us to, more and more, process more and more of the "now" in our day to day lives. Of course, as pointed out at the beginning of this article, the very notion of "now" versus past and future presupposes linear time, but we'll leave that alone for now.
One of the best ways to illustrate the increasing significance of "now" to to think about Twitter: users are able to share a 140-character slice of "now" with friends. "Right now I'm listening to this music." "At this moment, I discovered an interesting item on the Internet." "Here is a photo of where I am right now."
The power of this really came home to me recently when my home town (Syracuse, NY) experienced an earthquake. When our office realized what was happening, we checked out the Internet for confirmation and a report. We were on the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake report; we were looking for news updates. I happened to be on Twitter, though, and while the other, standard reports were slow, within second of the event beginning, tweets were popping up that confirmed the quake and reported its magnitude!
Now, granted, legitimate venues have to confirm sources before they report, which takes time and slows the cycle.
But, in a way, that's the point. More and more of us have access instantaneously to information - unfiltered information.
It's unquestionably game-changing.
There are several websites that track Twitter trends. One of them TrendsMap, is particularly effective because it displays trending topics of conversation by rank (size and darkness of font), as well as geolocation.
I can't find any specific information about thresholds - what constitutes a significant enough number of tweets to get on the map, or to warrant a larger, darker font? Needless to say, topics tend to be clustered around larger cities, but you can zoom in on your location, or simply select "my location" from the toolbar (the application uses your Twitter registered location to identify your location). (Amusingly, the topics for my location the day I write this are "thunder" and "lightning." Weather. How original for Syracuse, NY!)
Personalizemedia.com recently quantified the new density of now: in the last three minutes, we're told, 90,000 tweets were published; 74 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube; 7000 images were uploaded to Flickr; 4.8 million searches were performed on Google; and 500 million emails were sent.
That's a lotta info.
And we're told that only 20% of the world's data is actually "structured" data. That is, data that can be easily processed - stuff like ocean temperatures, or (as above) how many images were uploaded to Flickr in the last three minutes.
The rest is unstructured data for which it is difficult to understand the meaning. So, in the case of most of that information quantified above, what does it mean that the hot topic for Syracuse tweets on July 16, 2010, was thunder? There are so many variables: who tweets (demographics)? Does it matter that July 16, 2010 was a Friday? And of course, there was a thunderstorm that particular morning. Would the same tweets have occurred in Philadelphia, given the same day of the week and a thunderstorm?
Here's an interesting app for the iPhone: it's called "Glow." It's a mobile application (this is a category of app that relies heavily on your location for its usefulness) that tracks how you and others "feel" on any given day, in any given location. Where are you, what are you doing, and how do you feel? A street view provides augmented reality (you look at the world around you through your iPhone camera, and the app layers information onto it: in this case, other Glow users who happen to be in your vicinity (as well as their reported emotional state!). (Eek! Stay away from that guy - he's in a terrible mood!)
Tweemotional reports on the emotional trends on Twitter. At the moment I checked the site, Tweemotional reported that the emotional state of Twitter was mostly EXHAUSTED, followed by: angry, anxious, ashamed, bored, cautious, confident, confused, depressed, disgusted, ecstatic, embarrassed, enraged, exhausted, frightened, frustrated, guilty, happy, hopeful, hysterical, jealous, lonely, lovestruck, mischievous, overwhelmed, sad, shocked, shy, smug, surprised, suspicious. Welcome to TGIF!
Needless to say, there are any number of other tracking apps that will check news mentions, influencers, even people's opinions, in a real-time fashion. Of course, it goes without saying that this information is, at least for the time being, highly demographically skewed to users of the media that produces the trackable information. But if FaceBook's quick adoption by the, ahem, "older" crowd is any predictor, more and more of us will be participating in the activities that provide this real-time information as time goes by.
The actual usefulness of all this remains to be seen. For example, we already know that reporting election results in eastern states can have an effect on voting patterns in western states; what will infinitely more information in an infinitely faster timeframe do to any of the decisions we make all the time?
Marketers are salivating, of course; political parties are definitely on this bandwagon; news operations are interested, wary, and frightened all at once; the rest of us are just jumping in and muddling around, treating the whole thing as one part magic, one part tech/work, and one part amusement park.
The whole merging of time, location and activity puts me in mind of a question my son used to ask me when he was about two and I was going to go somewhere without him: "How home are you gonna be?"
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