The Time Between Time by Richard Seltzer

(excerpt from Lenses, a collection of short essays in search of a publisher)

I enjoy binge-watching video series. I used to do this with DVDs, now I do it streaming using Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other services. Recently, I've watched: West Wing, House of Cards, Mad Men, Schitt's Creek, Love Sick, Scandal, Shameless, Homeland, Game of Thrones, Big Bang Theory, Sheldon, Dharma and Greg, The Borgias, Third Rock from the Sun, Frankie and Grace, Episodes, Coupling, Newsroom, Allie McBeall, Falling Skys, Suits, Picket Fences, Gilmore Girls, Rome, Spartacus, How I Med Your Mother, Life in Pieces, Jane the Virgin, Modern Family, Stranger Things, Heart of Dixie...

In the old days, the only choice for watching series was broadcast television. Typically, 22 episodes constituted a season, and the episodes were broadcast one per week, with the time slots for the rest of the year being reruns. It was a stop-start experience, often with cliff-hanger stories to encourage viewers to come back next week or next year.

The advent of video recorders changed that experience. You could save episodes and watch them whenever your wanted or in a bunch. You could rent or buy. You were no longer constrained by the broadcst schedule. You could fast-forward past commercials. You could pause. You could rewind and rewatch. You were in control.

Then came cable with video on demand and DVRs,
giving you similar control even more conveniently.

Now with streaming, you don't have to plan ahead. You can at any moment decide to binge on a series and watch one episode after another, from the first episode of the series through the last one, often without commercials. Watching in that mode, with only the interruptions you want, you can get deeply involved in stories and identify closely with the characters, and see the actors growing up and aging − like time-laps photography, watching grass grow or a flower bloom, where what normally takes days or months or years unfolds for you fast enough for you to enjoy the spectacle of change. Or you can choose to watch in stop-start mode, with breaks as long as you want, to suit your personal schedule and life style.

Viewing series by streaming has affected my perception of time. It has started me wondering if time itself continuous or discontinuous.

Film mimics action. A series of still photos viewed in rapid succession looks like natural movement. The faster the sequence, the smoother and more natural-seeming the motion. The camera takes a series of discrete pictures of real action; and, in playback, you see that action mimicked, and would not notice that it was an illusion, unless you viewed it in slow motion. And with animation, photos taken of still images, whether drawings or models, get replayed as action, making the impossible look natural.

You can get the reverse effect by turning on a strobe light in a dark room. Then you perceive what would otherwise look like smooth motion as a sequence of discontinuous still shots.

The human eye and brain evolved with this capability of converting a sequence of still images into the perception of motion. What was the survival benefit of this capability, which we evolved long before the invention of motion pictures? Why should we presume that the underlying reality which we perceive is smooth continuous motion? Rather, it seems likely that reality is discontinuous, like a series of still shots; and that we evolved the ability to perceive it as continuous because that provided practical benefits.

In other words, it is possible that time itself, the medium in which motion occurs, is discontinuous, just as what we perceive as continuous solid matter actually consists of molecules and atoms and force fields and is mostly empty space.

So how small is the basic unit of time and what is the time between time?

Normally we talk about time by analogy with space. In that mode, time is one dimensional like a line.

A spatial line extends infinitely. And time extends infinitely in the past and also in the future. By this spatial analogy, those are two directions on the same line. A point is the intersection of two lines. It is dimensionless. It has no extent. It can be thought of as infinitely small. By analogy, we could think of a moment as the intersection of two times lines.

How could there be more than one time line? Or why shouldn't there be?

There can be an infinite number of points on any line and on any line segment, no matter how small. But in the case of time, there is only one point − Now − which seems to move along the line in just one direction. Behind Now extends the past, and in front of it extends the future.

If the analogy of a line to time is useful, the line need not be straight and need not be limited to a single plane. While a spatial line is itself one-dimensional, it can curve and spiral, thereby existing in three spatial dimensions. In fact, since nothing can be straighter than a beam of light, and gravity either distorts space-time or bends a beam of light, in the real world all spatial lines exist in at least three spatial dimensions. Hence, by analogy, the time-line can be thought to exist in three temporal dimensions.

Instead of thinking of time as a straight line, visualize it as a line on a surface, which might be irregularly shaped. There might be multiple, even an infinite number of lines on this surface, which might be warped this way and that, and might have a shape that changes, regularly or randomly. The lines on this surface may never intersect, so then it would be necessary to define Now in a way that doesn't involve intersections. By analogy with a record on a turntable, we might define Now as the intersection of the groove with the needle. The surface moves, the needle stays in the groove/line. Where the needle has been is the past. Where it is headed is the future. And where it touches is Now.

We define time by motion: the hands of a clock, the rotation of the Earth, the perceived motion of the sun and stars. A digital clock belies that concept by displaying a sequence of numbers in stagger-step − one number, then another, then another − discrete changes rather than smooth continuous movement.

We might ask if reality consists of smooth continuous changes i.e. analog or of stop-start discrete changes i.e. digital. If discrete changes were small enough, we wouldn't perceive them any more than we see the discrete frames in a movie played at full speed. So the resolution of this question is beyond the limits of our perception.

We can make machines that perceive and record far more accurately than our all-too-human senses and brain. But the machines we rely on to extend our sensory and processing and memory capabilities are all digital − based on two discrete choices − yes or no; one or zero − and hence the resolution of this question is beyond the ability of machines as well − at least beyond the ability of digital machines.