{"id":3299,"date":"2012-12-19T20:38:02","date_gmt":"2012-12-20T00:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/?p=3299"},"modified":"2012-12-19T20:41:06","modified_gmt":"2012-12-20T00:41:06","slug":"timeframes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/timeframes\/","title":{"rendered":"Timeframes"},"content":{"rendered":"

From a speech titled, “10 Timeframes,” given by Paul Ford to MFA graduates. (LINK<\/a>) This is an excerpt of the second of his ten timeframes<\/p>\n

\nYou know that decades are a recent invention? Decades are hardly a century old. Not the concept of having ten years of course, but the concept of the decade as a sort of major cultural unit, like when I say \u201cthe 90s\u201d and you think of flannel shirts and grunge music and great R&B music, or when I say \u201cthe 80s\u201d and you think of people with big hair using floppy disks. You need a lot of change for a decade to be a meaningful demarcation. Back in the 1600s they didn\u2019t really talk about centuries as much either. It was all about the life of the king, the reign (of King James and so forth), or the era.<\/p>\n

And then they invent clocks and clocks get cheaper and cheaper. Clocks are an amazing experience, right? Two hands, and a bell. This sense of relentless forward motion and they go in only one direction. Imagine doing user testing on clocks.<\/p>\n

You say, \u201cYou\u2019re a farmer\u2014tell me about a normal day.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the farmer says, \u201cNormally I wake up then depending on the month I might plant or reap the harvest.\u201d<\/p>\n

And you say, \u201cHow do you know what to plant?\u201d<\/p>\n

And the farmer says, \u201cI\u2019ve got this poem that we\u2019ve been using for generations, so like, in June I mow my corn, in August I harvest my wheat with a sickle, stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And you\u2019re trying to build understanding, you say, \u201cThat poem sounds really useful. But I\u2019d like to talk about a new approach to time. What if I could divide every single day into 24 big parts called hours, and each of those into 60 little parts called minutes? So now instead of having just a whole day, you have 1,440 little pieces of time and you can arrange them and do whatever you want. What is your reaction to that?\u201d<\/p>\n

And I think the farmer would probably be polite but I\u2019m guessing he\u2019d be thinking, \u201cClock? That\u2019s the single stupidest thing I\u2019ve ever heard.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From a speech titled, “10 Timeframes,” given by Paul Ford to MFA graduates. (LINK) This is an excerpt of the second of his ten timeframes You know that decades are a recent invention? Decades are hardly a century old. Not the concept of having ten years of course, but the concept of the decade as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,51],"tags":[1130,155],"class_list":["post-3299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-quote","tag-speech","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3299"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3308,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3299\/revisions\/3308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}