Ester Dyson is hosting When 2.0 on December 6, 2005. I have long been fascinated with the use of calendars as a view of time. The multiple perspectives of time from a system perspective, a human experience or flow, from a estimatation, to the fidelity or resolution.
Garret Dimon talks about his ability to operate on an approximate 15 minute cycle. Using this perception of time, a minute hand is not necessary, he just needs to be able to perceive 4 separate increments within each hour.
The catch is that time is dependent on the observer . Time is different for different people, different environments (virtual versus physical worlds), different machines, etc. Web time has been about faster. Ramesh Jain talks about how faster isn’t the only question. Podcasts, blogs, TiVO are all changing our perceptions of media and time. I don’t have to watch TV according to broadcast schedules, as an observer with a PVR I can watch according to my schedule. Podcasts are changing radio, mostly in terms of who and where, but when is a big feature. Others are talking about the impact that iTunes random function is having on what .
Web time, Netscape time have all been the focus of faster (.ca ). And the question of developers. What happens when development time approaches zero? This was asked by Andy Hunt . We’ve seen other industries do this, financial entities using time and capital more efficiently than others, manufacturers doing just-in-time manufacturing with an inventory of zero, etc. Is this progression towards zero time with development feasible? Rails , TurboGears and Django have made this increasingly more possible for web-tier applications. The question Randy asked me was will product/project managers and users ask for next that will extend development times again.
I heard this 20 years ago when SQL was gonna make application development trivia. And it did. But then users wanted GUIs. If you extrapolate this, then if you nail our current development process to near zero time, then applications will be differentiated by a new product requirement that will cause the development timeframe to expand again.
This is a fantastic challenge. We all experience time differently, and different applications have different flow. 30 seconds to download a terabyte seems fast, but 30 seconds to stop the flow of blood from a wound can be a long time. Disney understands the impact of perception on time, it’s about the experience. Maybe that is the biggest impact that time has is the experience. Rails, Django, TurboGears are just examples of being able to get their faster, and allow us as designers and developers to focus on the what not the when.