Have you ever noticed how different the time could be? It flies when we are in a flow state, moves like a snail when we are standing in a queue and disappears when we start reading our Facebook feed. Setting the jokes aside, we all experience time in our own unique way. To understand our experience of time better, let’s look at what time really is.
Two facets of time
There are two aspects of time – chronos and kairos. While the former structures time into minutes, days and weeks, the latter represents qualitative experiences in a given moment. Our speaker Chris Dancy has measured both. Dancy admits that getting the data on chronoception is not hard. All you need to do is turn on your tracking decides and get your data logged right into your Google calendar. But how do you measure and score feelings?
Dancy uses DIKW pyramid to describe kairos. Pieces of data combined create information, information becomes knowledge, knowledge becomes wisdom. Thus, to get high up the pyramid he started to combine data with photos he took in a moment the data was recorded. The photos revealed more about the feelings he had while doing certain things.
Brain is a Time Machine
Time perception is a construction of the brain that is manipulable and distortable under certain circumstances. So is it possible to biohack our sense of time?
This research suggests our perception of time is partially dependent on a number of new experiences we have during a given day. When we engage in new experiences, our perception of time differs from when we do in a mundane or repetitive task.
Dancy claims that most of our smartphones and wearable devices are modern versions of time machines. We experience past by looking back at our photo gallery and checking Facebook memories. We experience now by choosing movies to watch or games to play. We experience soon through AI, by setting up reminders for our calendars. Finally, we experience future through music, by seeing a list of songs on your Spotify or Apple music, that are scheduled to play in the future.
How to hack time?
According to Dancy, today we have enough technology to hack the time. He built an instruction manual for time hacking. The manual breaks down into 3 parts – collecting feedback, triggering it by different parameters and creating ambient feedback loops. This way you give your mind a gentle nudge to believe that it is a different time.
Dancy provides more hands-on examples of how to slow time using only your smartphone in the video below. You can learn more from Chris at Biohacker Summit in Helsinki on October 13-14.
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