Time perception compression

JohnLocke

Hello,
Consider this.
Every decade throughout the 20th century was drastically different, constantly changing, leading up to the PC in the 1990s. Throughout the 2000s, technology invented in the 80s and 90s (i.e. email) was optimised to produce social media in the late 2000s. For me, 2010 seems exactly like 2018 in terms of technology and how we go about our life. There hasn't been much change over time here since about 2010. It is as though society has reached a technological pinnacle of some kind, and is somewhat stagnating. What is even more daunting is that I can watch YouTube videos from 2010, 2013, and 2014 and so on, and not notice anything strikingly 'old' or nostalgic. However, if YouTube were around in the 1980s, you would notice huge differences in society between 1980 and 1990. Our ability to watch videos from 10 years ago and not notice anything 'old fashioned' is compressing my perception of time so that one year no longer seems as significant as it once was. Therefore, the human life span seems very short and it is very strange feeling for me. I feel connected into a larger technology that isn't changing at the rate it once was (for example, I can read social media posts from 2005, 13 years ago) and relate to them. Whereas, if I read a letter from 1988 in 2000, I would be thinking 'my gosh, isn't this old, look at the font style and so on'. It is as though no time has passed at all, which has serious implications for me in terms of how I perceive time. Is there any merit in what I am trying to say here?

jgill

This might be of interest: Towards the end is a section on perception of time passage corresponding to advancing age. Nothing serious.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321554337_An_Elementary_Note_Playing_With_Complex_and_Distorted_Time_in_C

:cool:

I like sushi

A thought to consider is today people are growing up attached to their past - photos, videos and multi media allow us to have a more accurate window into the past (personally and on global scale). I do think this will affect people’s attitudes to both past and future (especially younger generations whose lives are recorded for them to play back and observe).

TogetherTurtle

Did people who experienced the 1760's look back at those years in 1784 and think of them as self contained I wonder?

I think that perhaps the pace of progress was just right during the 1900's to foster a sense of what we would think of as a decade. Before it was too slow, and now I think too fast. Despite things not seeming different, I assume you as a computer dork that I would rather be living with today's tech than live with what we had in 2010. On the outside, your phone looks the same every time you get a new one, but on the inside things are very much changing.

While the outside of things used to change often but the function would stay the same, (fashion of the 60's vs of the 80's for example) now the outside of things is staying the same while the function is changing or improving. It seems that people have elected to reap the benefits of change without having to accept or even see it.

As for merit in what you're saying, I think there is. You notice something that, either intentionally or not, is supposed to be unnoticeable. Good job.

Pfhorrest

A confounding factor to consider is that as people age they generally find time seems to pass more quickly since there are fewer and fewer new experiences (e.g. high school feels like a much longer period of time than ages 40-43 do; there is a huge difference between a freshman and a senior, in each others’ eyes at least, but a 40 year old and a 43 year old see each other as basically the same). So everyone in every era will find that the last ten years seem way more samey and less individually significant than any given successive years from a decade or two prior.

Time perception compression

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