Coevalness

An infinite now

I like thinking about time. What I like the most about it is that there are so many different ways to think about time. On the one hand, time is arguably the hardest problem in the history of humanity's scientific project; what is the fundamental, functional nature of time? Does it exist and if so, how does it exist? Is it a straight line, a circle, a series of circles, a block, or perhaps an infinite amount of threads pointing towards an infinite amount of possible directions at any give moment from a single point? Will we ever advance far enough as an intelligent species to observe and manipulate time directly? In that sense, thinking about time is thinking about everything, all at once.

On the other hand, thinking about time can be a fleeting thing. As you sit there on your balcony at three at night because you can't sleep, you think to yourself; what do I do with the time that I have? You might think about time that is no longer now, or about time that has yet to become now. And thinking of either of those two can fill you with every possible emotion under the sun; yearning, fear, gratitude, pride, shame, excitement, and so on. Instead of thinking about time in all its mind-bending, reality-shattering, infinitely paradoxical glory, you might think about time on your own terms; what does it mean for me? Right now?

Reading Joseph's piece about how different organisms perceive time based on their respective physiological characteristics, I was astounded at first; 'Isn't it awe-inspiring to know that all these different experiences of time exist, literally embedded into our physiology?' Then right after, my mind wandered to what I have always felt is the most essential theory about time that has ever been conceptualised and no it has nothing to do with quantum physics. Instead, let's talk about coevalness, or 'sharing' time.

Time as power

Across the board, I think Joseph did an amazing job presenting this topic of time perception from a neuroscientific perspective. As approaching time from this perspective is not something I'm particularly knowledgeable about, instead I'm going to dive a bit deeper into one aspect of time perception Joseph mentioned in his post; time as social agreement.

In 1983, Johannes Fabian wrote 'Time and the Other' [1], a seminal work in the history of anthropology which critiqued, in some ways irrepairably, the ways in which earlier anthropologists approached the issue of timeliness when conducting ethnographies. It problematises the following point. Dialogue and cooperation between researcher and interlocutor always happens in 'coeval' time; whenever we interact with one another, we always do so in the same 'now'. While this might sound self-evident, this is not how these interactions are subsequently theorised; Fabian argues that the researcher has the power to write about the 'Other' in such a way that it puts them in another kind of temporal frame. It is the modality of time that the researcher represents himself in that constitutes the 'motor of history'; it is from his 'present' that the lives of others can be relegated to a fixed point in the past or the future, or in a cyclical 'now' which does not evolve at the same pace as his own present. Imagine sensational, futuristic representations of Japanese society in the 1980's [2], or on the flip side, the romanticised Orientalism which places such as India have been subjected to for centuries in travel writings [3].

In this sense, going beyond even the notion of 'social' time, time is also a matter of power; getting to define what is the past, what is now, what is the future, and who belongs were quite literally determines the course of history. This act of temporal distancing is what Johannes Fabian calls a 'denial of coevalness'; to deny the Other a place in the same shared moment of time.

Life of Generations - Sarah Ginidy (2018)

When Johannes Fabian conceived this term, he of course meant for it to be a critique of how we, as in, humanity, think about our experience of timeliness. But as Joseph made clear in his piece, even at the physiological level different organisms possess different parameters for how time can be perceived. Going beyond even living beings, we are able to theorise the parameters of time perception for machines as well. But then again, as far as we are able to comprehend, we are moving through time together with all of these entities. Things do not just appear and disappear all around us while only we are moving through time dynamically; we share every moment of our time, and depending on which point of view you take, all those moments are 'now'.

Machine generations

So let's think about this for a moment in the context of technology. It is easy for us to think that incarnations of technology are these atemporal specks of human ingenuity, as if they are trees alongside a highway that only we drive on, appearing in sight for a moment and then disappearing again as a new tree enters our field of view. Instead of relegating machines to either the pages of history or to the imaginations of the future, let's think about technology as always having been there with us since the beginning. From the moment that homonids first started using tools, technology has been there, developing right there with us as we evolved as a species, not incidentally but symbiotically. And in our present moment, as questions of machine intelligence or even machine 'consciousness' are becoming more and more unavoidable, let's instead take a moment to think about how we have shared time with machines for ages.

I'd like to imagine a hypothetical work which aims to not look at machines as these incidental objects that were useful for a while until they became outdated, but instead look at machinery as 'cumulative'. Imagine a current state-of-the-art robot, equipped with all the latest advances in robotic movement and AI-powered cognitive abilities. Let's go back from there; can we retrace all the incarnations of this kind of machinery that came before it? Effectively, you would end up with a timeline of 'machine generations', going further and further back into the past. Allowing for this conceptualisation of machines as having always moved through time with us, perhaps it would allow for a different kind of identification with the technology we use every day. If it truly is the case that we can now imagine a future in which machines would begin to exhibit levels of spatiotemporal awareness to the point that they are aware that they exist in a timely manner, not just in terms of processing speed but in terms of time as 'past, present and future', perhaps it would be interesting to start experimenting with moving away from a 'denial of coevalness' not just for other human beings, but for machines as well.

Thank you for reading this far into my ramblings, I appreciate it. Have a wonderful day.

~ Boet

List of references:

[1] Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other. 1983.

[2] Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

[3] Roh, D. S., Huang, B., & Niu, G. A. (2019). Technologizing Orientalism: An Introduction. In D. S. Roh, B. Huang, & G. A. Niu (Eds.), Techno-Orientalism (pp. 1–20). Rutgers University Press. https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813570655-002

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