No, I have NOT been smoking any of that stuff...

Pity, really. I could do with a good relax.

ANYWAY, I've been reading quite a lot of random material lately.

Let me just start off by talking about Manuel de Landa's A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. If you are in any way interested in a) historiography; b) philosophy; c) cultural history; d) economic theories; e) the debate about the relevance of science to the humanities, and vice versa; or f) any or all of the above, READ it.

I know it's 10 years old, and that there's other work building on the book, but this is just a fascinating read. And I'm only halfway through. Plus it works with everything I've been reading about dynamic (nonlinear) systems theory in the last few months.

On the other hand, I've just finished the latest Harry Potter (well, the day after it came out), and the last Tales of the City, Michael Tolliver Lives.

The most interesting topic I've been reading about, however, is to do with time. Now, Einstein's theory of relativity posits that time is experienced relatively - the speed at which your body travels through space affects your experience of time (or at least, that's my vague memory of the theory wrt time).

Then there's a concept I came across a while back - Henri Bergson's Virtual, which states that our perception of Now is based on our experience, as visualised through the connection of many possibilities. It's kind of complicated, but I'll give it a shot: effectively, our minds draw from a space called the Virtual (strangely enough, a virtual space) in which every image and concept (whether already-experienced or potential) exists. The way we make sense of any experience we have is to draw upon the Virtual. In other words, we make sense of the current sensations by filtering the various images that come to mind.

What has this got to do with time? Well, the images that come to mind are not just memories (aka. images of the past) - they are also images of presents-that-aren't, of pasts-that-never-were and futures-that-could-be. In other words, time is relative and somewhat circular - it is only present experience that is able to create a linear
impression of time (aka. past -> present -> future).

Anyway, all this is to say that there are plenty of valid philosophies and models for the way time operates.

Which (finally!) brings me to two interesting articles that have come across my desk in the last few weeks. The first, in which it turns out a simple light experiment comes up with very strange results. Apparently, the photons in this experiment either form stripes or spots depending on whether they are observed directly (following the uncertainty principle). However, the strange bit is when photons form spots when observed - but where the observing device is revealed after the photons have already passed through the barrier that supposedly decides the outcome. In other words, a future event affects the present outcome.

Now, a systems perspective would suggest that this is a matter of feedback playing itself out in time - elements related to the situation feeds back to the inputs and decide the ultimate outcome of the situation. It's a nonlinear model of time; the past and the future collude to make sense of the present. (Sound somewhat similar?).

Now, that's presuming time exists at all. Maybe it is just easy to think of time as an organizing concept; yet another social construct (nonetheless with real effects) that helps us to make sense.

[CTheory.Net: 1000 Years of War]
[Manuel De Land Annotated Bibliography]
[Good Morning Silicon Valley: Had we but world enough, and time]
[MSNBC.com: Putting Time in a (Leaky) Bottle]
[DISCOVER: Newsflash: Time May Not Exist]

Oh, I'll take your tagging challenge, all right

For the first time in forever, it's a quiet day at work. (Public holiday in the US - which means the rest of the week is bound to be a nightmare). So I'm using the time productively - reading other people's blogs, including QP. Noticing he's taken up Richard Watts' tagging challenge, I figured I'd try it out:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences along with these instructions.

5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

The fun thing is that for once my cool, intellectual book is actually the nearest book (it's even closer than the partner agreement folder, which is a) the only book on my work desk and b) would require me to find the 123rd partner agreement... anyway too much effort). So without further ado, from Félix Guattari's Chaosophy:

The whole system of projections derives from machines, and not the reverse. Should the desiring-machine be defined then by by a kind of introjection, by a a certain perverse use of the machine? Let us take the example of the telephone exchange: by dialing an unassigned number, connected to an automatic answering device ("the number you dialed is not in service...") one can hear the overlay of an ensemble of teeming voices, calling and answering each other, criss-crossing, fading out, passing over and under each other, criss-crossing, fading out, passing over and under each other, inside the automatic voice, very short messages, utterances obeying rapid and monotonous codes. There is the Tiger; it is rumored there is even an Oedipus in the network; boys calling girls, boys calling boys.

(OK, so I'm not technically sure whether I quoted four or five sentences, but whatever). I'm just glad I was at my work machine and not the home one - would probably be quoting DNA magazine or something...