Time is an abstract concept that defies a singular definition. Here, I will take a random walk through different perspectives of time to show some of its complexities.

TIME AS A CONSTRUCT OF THE BRAIN

The sense of time plays an essential role in many of the cognitive processes that shape our daily lives.

Time perception, just like vision, is a construction of the brain. Just like vision can be distorted through optical illusions, our brain’s perception of time can be distorted as well.

For example, the brain constructs a coherent narrative by keeping a sensory window open for 80 milliseconds.

Therefore, as long as a TV or film soundtrack is synchronised within 80 milliseconds of the movie track, you will not notice any lag, but if the delay gets any longer, the disjoint becomes apparent.

If our perception of time is not as absolute as we believe, how can we ensure that our conclusions about reality are not affected by these perceptual biases?

The author and neuroscientist David Eagleman wrote that “our physical theories are mostly built on top of our filters for perceiving the world, and time may be the most stubborn filter of all to budge out of the way.”

Some neuroscientists are now beginning to consider conditions like schizophrenia — and even dyslexia — not as psychological or cognitive disorders, but as time disorders.

For example, research shows that the internal clock in patients suffering from schizophrenia runs at an irregular speed.

The hypothesis is that errors in temporal information processing could give rise to some of the symptoms of schizophrenia such as hallucinations, or the disconnect between thought and action.

TIME AS A CONSTRUCT OF SPEED

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2017, “the Fourth Industrial Revolution is creating new global risks and exacerbating existing risks.”

Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, argues that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. His point is that speed — or more precisely, acceleration — increases the challenge and complexity of these risks.

Ray Kurzweil, the futurist and author of The Singularity Is Near, calls it the Law of Accelerating Returns, explaining that “we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress.”

Charles Fine, an MIT professor of management, first applied the term “clockspeed” to describe the faster pace of life in an industrial context. Then a new term emerged, “risk clockspeed”, which is “the rate at which the information necessary to understand and manage a risk becomes available.”

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things fall into the category of fast clockspeed risks, because there is insufficient time and information available to understand and manage the risks that they could pose. Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have famously warned of the dangers of AI.

What new frameworks and competencies do governments need for effective risk management in a world of accelerating change and heightened risk clockspeed? Fast clockspeeds of the Fourth Industrial Revolution give little time for government and society to adapt.

TIME AS THE ARBITER OF VALUE

Nick Szabo, a computer scientist who designed a mechanism for a decentralised digital currency called bit gold — a precursor to the Bitcoin architecture — argues that the ability to measure and verify clock time was a game-changer for medieval Europe.

The advent of the mechanical clock provided an authoritative measurement of time duration, which in turn led to the creation of time-rate wage, resulting in serfdom and slavery giving way to worker choice, and transforming in a fundamental way the economic institutions of the Middle Ages.

E. P. Thompson, in his classic 1967 essay “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism,” wrote that with the industrial revolution, “time is now currency, it is not passed but spent.”

Time as a basis of value runs deep within our social structures. However, time measures input rather than output.

Clock time measures effort, not the results of one’s effort. While this made sense in the Industrial Age where workers functioned as units of labour in the wider machinery of production, the changing nature of work and the advent of task-based platforms are shifting the measurement and reward for work away from time (input) towards outcome (output).

I suspect that this shift will prove to be a radical one and will lead to changes in many social institutions that are today based on time as a unit of value.

Today, work and employment are still tied to time. While some companies have fully embraced work-from-home arrangements, the notion of working hours and taking vacation leave are still based on time-based notions of work.

What will be the impact of greater gig-based work platforms, and the disruption of the time-based model of employment?

The modern notion of time-banking is also built on this basis of measured units of time as a common currency or unit of value.

In time-banking, the members of the community earn, collect and spend time credits. Time-banking builds on the notion of time as a unit of value that is collectively endorsed. In a climate of increasing inequality and decreasing trust in financial institutions, time-banking promotes equality and the building of trust.

When everyone starts out with 24 hours, and where one hour of a doctor’s time is of the same value as one hour of a blue-collar worker’s time, there are fewer opportunities for inequality.

In Singapore, two start-ups, Hourvillage and Kuiddle, have launched time-banking platforms.

Could time return as an important arbiter of value that mitigates inequality?

At the same time, the progress of science and technology can disrupt the value and importance of time. For example, scientists have now found a way to use ultrasound to age whisky in days rather than years.

This overturns the time-based value of whisky and challenges time as the main arbiter of value, at least in the whisky business.

TIME AS POWER

The standardisation of international time was both an important act of globalisation as well as a parable of power. It provides a glimpse into the complexity of achieving greater inter-connectivity in a world messy and fraught with geopolitical and cultural complexities.

For example, in 1875, American railways recognised an astonishing 75 different local times, three of which were in Chicago alone. And before 1918, Russia was 13 days behind Western Europe because they used the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar.

In 1884, the Prime Meridian Conference in Washington DC agreed to adopt the Greenwich mean time system with 24 time zones centred on the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The standardisation of international time was arguably the exercise of global power by the British who were then at the height of their imperium.

Of course, this was not universally accepted. The French felt it was an indignity to set French time with reference to an English observatory. So, in 1891, France adopted a nationwide mean time and refused to adopt the Greenwich meridian until 1911.

TIME AS A CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCT

Different languages frame time differently.

English and Swedish speakers tend to think of time in terms of distance—what a long day or a short break. Time is an expanse to be traversed. However, Greek and Spanish speakers tend to think of time in terms of volume — a full day. For them, time is a container to be filled.

While we may speak about time in spatial terms, do we think about it in spatial terms as well?

In 2015, researchers in Belgium scanned the brains of participants as they answered questions about the order of events that had recently happened or were about to happen.

They found that these tasks engaged parts of the brain that support spatial imagery. The reference to spatial concepts is our way of dealing with the abstract nature of time.

As a linguistic — and therefore cultural — concept, time is intrinsically tied to our humanity. How do our language and culture bias or predetermine our view and understanding of time? Does this limit our understanding of abstract concepts like time and space?

TIME AS A TOOL

Time perception is a powerful tool which can be used to influence decision-making and behaviour. The cognitive bias of hyperbolic discounting shows that humans tend to be more present-oriented than future-oriented, more inclined to choose a smaller-sooner reward over a larger-later reward.

Perhaps, shifting our perception of time to incorporate a greater futureorientation holds the potential for better decision-making, and greater readiness for unpredictability in the future.

At an organisational level, this is the role of foresight and futures thinking, to tell stories about the future in order to “manipulate” people into being open-minded.

Pierre Wack, the father of scenario planning, calls scenario planning “the gentle art of re-perceiving” in order to achieve better collective outcomes 30–40 years in the future.

The Long Now Foundation is building a 10,000-year clock inside a mountain in western Texas owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.

The clock is literally a monumental attempt to shift our perception of time. Built to run for ten millennia with minimal maintenance and interruption, it provides a representation of how to think and talk about the future.

The project asks questions such as: “If you have a clock ticking for 10,000 years, what kinds of generational-scale questions and projects will it suggest? Why not attempt other projects that require future generations to finish? Are we being good ancestors?”

It behoves us to think about such questions.

Time may be a complex concept, but it can stretch our perceptions and enable us to re-evaluate our present actions by manipulating our ability to project into the future and imagine new possibilities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Peter Ho is senior adviser to the Centre for Strategic Futures. It serves as a focal point for futures thinking within the Singapore Government. This piece was recently published in the centre's biennial publication Foresight, which covers research into international megatrends and emerging issues.