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Xeno's Paradox in Real Time

John Roberts has the blog byline,

Time [is] the only true currency.

In reading the Cryptonomicon Gedankenexperiments, I've been thinking a lot about Zeno's Paradoxes:

Despite compelling proposed solutions to these paradoxes, I think about how everything in my life keeps happening faster and in ever-more-real-time like ripples in the pond -- blogs, news, feeds, web, email, instant messaging, social networking, work, gedankenexperiments, home -- and how it all leaves me with the feeling,

The more things happen in real time, the more impossible it is to keep up...

So maybe the goal shouldn't be to keep up. Maybe the goal should be to figure out a way to enable the most important things to bubble to the top...

December 08, 2004 at 12:48 PM in Out Of Time |

Comments

Greg Linden

Hi, Adam. Exactly right! Bubble the important information to the top.

That's our goal at Findory. Findory helps you find focus in the flood of information. It learns your interests, searches thousands of news and blog sources, and helps you discover the essential news of the day.

Posted by: Greg Linden | December 09, 2004 at 02:38 PM

Timboy

Heh. The very best blog-comment spam of all is one that _seems_ like a relevant comment.

Posted by: Timboy | December 09, 2004 at 10:46 PM

Greg Linden

It's not relevant? Isn't it an example of what Adam is talking about? A way to deal with the flood of information? At least for news and weblogs?

Posted by: Greg Linden | December 10, 2004 at 07:49 PM

Timboy

You're right. That was very relevant comment spam.

Posted by: Timboy | December 10, 2004 at 10:44 PM

Ernest Prabhakar

I disagree that Time is the only fundamental currency. My current hypothesis is that there are three irreducible things that matter:
* Time
* Energy
* Character

At least, those seem to be the limits I'm hitting while preparing for Christmas. ;-) -- Dr. E

Posted by: Ernest Prabhakar | December 11, 2004 at 10:10 AM

Greg Linden

Doh. I really didn't mean for it to be comment spam. Sorry about that.

Posted by: Greg Linden | December 11, 2004 at 05:23 PM

Adam

Greg, I didn't find your comments to be spam. But I did know about Findory before, mainly from reading your blog.

Tim's sensitive to relevance, comprehensiveness, freshness, and presentation (see interview 1 and interview 2).

As for Ernie's point. Well. Time, energy, and character are three things for which I have never gotten a satisfactory definition.

Posted by: Adam | December 13, 2004 at 03:00 PM

Timboy

Adam's right, Greg. I see comment spam everywhere now, even at night in dark rooms. My apologies.

By the way, great site you have here. You can find more viagra ambien poker teen amateurs like this at http://timconverse.com/blog/

Posted by: Timboy | December 15, 2004 at 09:57 PM

Adam

I feel cheated. I went to Tim's blog and found none of those promised items.

Interestingly enough, when I googled for pornspam, I am the #1 hit, whereas when I yahoo!ed for pornspam, Tim is the #1 hit.

Tim is in the top 10 google hits for pornspam, whereas I am not in the top 10 yahoo! hits for pornspam.

I'm not sure what it all means, other than I just wasted the last 90 seconds of my life searching for pornspam and finding only Tim and myself...

Posted by: Adam | December 16, 2004 at 08:51 AM

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