Comment Articles

Time travel on your computer

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 31 Jul 2002 16:29 BST

Our PCs make time as malleable and sculptable as any of the three dimensions of space, and they're the first widespread tools that can do this. It's the most unexplored aspect of human existence, purely because it's been so untouchable, and thus it's the most exciting. Even just sticking to things that happen to the computers themselves suggests areas for exploration. Desktop pictures that morph so slowly you're never sure they've changed but are nonetheless constantly different; the hidden patterns in the tiny delays that characterise the arrival of each packet over the Internet; even the unheard rhythms in our typing and mousing -- for a world always thirsting after new insights and new experiences, these are just the surface atoms on a huge and unexplored lake.

The combination of broadband, enormous hard disks and warp-speed processors means that everyone and their dog can grab stuff online, manipulate it in hundreds of ways and get it out to the world. It can't help but make a difference, especially now the spreading network of blogs and discussion groups is making the most difficult link -- that from the creator of a good new idea to the audience -- much easier.

It's always good to break out of old ways of thinking, old ways of looking at things -- in fact, it's essential to our cultural health. Otherwise, no matter how whizzy our new tools are we'll be mentally locked back in the world of 4.77MHz. Get out there. Listen to slow-motion Ludvig. Find some sound-tweaking software, and mess around with your favourite MP3s. Press that turbo button. You owe it to the species.

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