{"id":262,"date":"2024-08-18T07:22:07","date_gmt":"2024-08-18T07:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thescepticandseeker.com\/?p=262"},"modified":"2025-07-15T15:54:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T15:54:17","slug":"musings-on-our-sense-of-time-the-past-and-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thescepticandseeker.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/18\/musings-on-our-sense-of-time-the-past-and-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Musings on our sense of ‘time’, the past, and the future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image Courtesy<\/strong>: Screengrab from the video on Panama Canal in Lesics Channel in Youtube. [link at the end]<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the most thought provoking and insightful piece I have read on our ability to put \u2018time in perspective\u2019<\/a> is from Tim Urban<\/a><\/strong>, a prolific writer. His writings are deeply researched and often an explainer on many topics when one is trying to make sense of this world. Our ability to have a sense of time is in grossly inadequate. It is constrained significantly or limited by the lifespan of an average human being. 70~80 years or perhaps 100 years. Tim beautifully explains it by mapping chunks of historical and pre-historical periods in a 24-hour cycle. Do not miss that utterly fascinating read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does not being able to ‘put time in perspective’ distorts our ability to comprehend how much accomplishments we, as humanity have made in the past or be optimistic of the future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is based on my personal experience and is no way a representation of everyone. For instance, we tend to believe that most development has happened or happening in our lifetime. Our accomplishments of this generation are the best. It is true that the development happens as time progresses and this decade is for sure better than the last. And the next generation will be certainly better than ours. But in a way, we underestimate the past progresses, the huge efforts that have gone to make it happen, and its positive consequences. This is probably arising out of our ignorance (for me certainly it is). On the other end, we also think about the damages that the development has brought and assume that no further progress is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What triggered these thoughts? A few readings in the recent past (which made me to dig further to some earlier readings).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solar energy is now considered as the future of energy, and for the right reasons. Most of us think it is a recent development (in the last few decades) and the contribution of this generation. But the commercial value of Solar Power was proved as early as in 1913, when Frank Shuman<\/strong>, an American Engineer built world\u2019s first solar thermal energy plant in Egypt<\/strong>, pumping 5000 gallons of water in a minute from Nile River to the adjacent cotton fields. In fact, he built the first proof of concept in 1897 and patented in 1912. The discovery of cheap oil was the reason any further research and development on solar was stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Newcomen<\/strong> is credited for the invention of the first steam engine in 1712<\/strong>. [James Watt improvised it later]. However almost 2000 years ago<\/strong>, the Greek mathematician and engineer<\/strong>, known by the name Hero of Alexandria<\/strong>, who lived during the period 10 AD \u2013 70 AD, invented aeolipile<\/strong><\/em>, the first recorded steam engine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I read the story of building the Suez Canal<\/strong> and later the Panama Canal<\/strong> by Ferdinand De Lesseps<\/strong>, the feeling was frightening as well as a fascination. The seeds of Suez Canal were sown in early 1800s by Prosper Enfantin<\/strong>. But it was Lesseps who made it possible, starting the work in 1861. With more than 60,000 workers at any given time, working with manual tools, forced labour, half the wages, unsanitary living conditions, and often sleeping in the deserts, it was a major engineering project. There was also the water locking system, which lifts shifts to higher levels to traverse elevated stretches. And reading further, I learnt that the Chinese already had water locking system over 1000 years ago and the French already had an engineering marvel – the 240-km Canal du Midi which opened in 1681.<\/strong> [Watch the science of Panama Canal here at the end of this text]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or the story of the Tower Bridge in London,<\/strong> where in the late 1880s, when workers had to go under water with heavy leather boots, without any modern gear and most or all of them working 12 hours, 7 days a week to produce another engineering marvel. Work-life balance \u2013 anyone? Or the mental stress of not getting enough views for your Instagram reel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We stand on the shoulders of the giants\u2019<\/em><\/strong> is a phrase used to acknowledge that knowledge and inventions keep building on top of previous knowledge and inventions. Something that is worth remembering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[As an aside, I can’t help but remember the quote ‘The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads’,<\/strong> attributed to Jeff Hammerbacher<\/strong>, an early employee of Facebook]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other end of the spectrum, we are not the first generation (nor the last) that laments about the fast-paced life, the changes that technology brings, the loss of personal connections and indulge in doomsday thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1825 (a good 200 years back!)<\/strong>, Goethe<\/strong> had this to say about the then fast paced urban life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cEverything nowadays is ultra, everything is being transcended continually in thoughts as well as in action. No one knows himself any longer; no one can grasp the element in which he lives or the materials that he handles. Pure simplicity is out of the question; of simplifiers have enough. Young people are stirred up much too early in life and then carried away in the whirl of times. Wealth and rapidity are what the world admires\u2026 Railways, quick mails, steamships, and every possible kind of rapid communication are what the educated world seeks but in only over-educates itself and thereby persists in its mediocrity. It is moreover, the result of universalization that a mediocre culture becomes common\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sounds familiar? Like how we hear about internet and other modern technology affecting us now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, it is difficult to imagine about the world beyond the 70- or 80-years period, the typical human lifespan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch the science and engineering of Panama Canal in this video. [From Lesics<\/strong>, a Youtube Channel for engineering education]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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