About Time - Presenting Futures Past

As a concept, time is something that becomes more complicated the longer you focus on it. Let’s start with the basics: We deal with three types of time - past, present and future. But even this is problematic. How long is the present?

Professor Ernst Pöppel has spent decades studying what we call the present: "There is something like a subjective present, and it has been described in what is the best book written on the subject - "Confessiones" by Saint Augustine in 397. In it he tells us there is only the now, the present, the subjective present and that we can express this as a moment that lasts only for about two to three seconds."

During this interval, information is picked up by the brain, reorganized and stored away. This tact, says Pöppel, can be found all around us. For example shaking hands, two to three seconds spent doing this is regarded as normal. Then there is the glance: We look at strangers for about the same time, any longer could be perceived as intrusive.  
  
And what about the past and the future? How do we notice the passing of time? We always experience time sequentially, things take place one after the other. Were everything to remain the same, unaltered, then there would be no time. Time is change. The movement of a clock’s pendulum represents nothing less. But time only moves in one direction - the future becomes the present before turning into the past. Except in art, where different rules apply. There we can play with time, travel through it, stop it, speed it up and bring it back. Marcel Proust wrote volumes about bringing the past back to life in the present. 
 
Measuring time is relative. Einstein famously revealed that the rate at which time passes depends on your frame of reference. In other words, some seconds can be longer than others, depending on the speed you are moving at relative to an observer. Of course, we don’t experience this at first hand, but it remains nonetheless fascinating. Astrophysicist Harald Lesch puts it this way - I think our interest in time is provoked by our awareness of our own mortality.  
 
Perhaps this is the reason humans are so restless and always seeking ways to pack more into our day. A sociologist at the University of Jena, Hartmut Rosa, has written a book on accelerated lifestyles: "We really are living at a faster pace," he says. "We use a Microwave instead of an oven. We eat fast food instead of slow food." Perhaps this Japanese saying serves as a timely reminder - "When hurried it is often faster to take a roundabout route," meaning the more we forget about time, the more we have. 

Broadcasting Hours: 

DW English

FRI 31.12.2021 – 01:15 UTC
FRI 31.12.2021 – 04:15 UTC
FRI 31.12.2021 – 18:15 UTC
SAT 01.01.2022 – 15:15 UTC
SUN 02.01.2022 – 19:15 UTC
MON 03.01.2022 – 09:15 UTC

Lagos UTC +1 | Cape Town UTC +2 I Nairobi UTC +3
Delhi UTC +5,5 I Bangkok UTC +7 | Hong Kong UTC +8
London UTC +0 | Berlin UTC +1 | Moscow UTC +3
San Francisco UTC -7 | Edmonton UTC -6 | New York UTC -4
 

DW Deutsch+

MON 03.01.2022 – 09:15 UTC

Vancouver UTC -8 | New York UTC -5 | Sao Paulo UTC -3