EYES ONLY | official commentary

For the past couple of years I’ve been working with a chap called Stuart, and he has very interesting views on the world at large.  We’ve spent hours talking about history, technology, politics and religion.  The thing we’re mostly talking about though is our own perception of the 4th dimension.

We both work in IT, and are avid Skype users.  In different organisations we’ve seen video conferencing move from a slow and cumbersome experience into one where everyone can be connected.

At the moment Stuart is out of the country, so we’re staying in touch via Skype video conferencing on a daily basis.  Not only has this reduced email correspondence between us to almost zero, it also means that the personable component of presence in a meeting can be made.

This is where the 4th dimension comes into play.  It’s generally accepted that the 4th dimension is a measure of time expressed in a 3 dimensional world.  For example, imagine two people living in two different cities 200 miles apart.  Throughout time, there have been various methods of meeting, but all have involved one or both parties physically moving to another location.  If you had to walk 200 miles to meet someone, you could estimate that at a walking pace of 4 miles an hour, it would take 50 hours to get there.  If both parties walked 100 miles, that would be 25 hours, at the same 4 miles per hour pace.  If we add in a horse the time shortens; if we move to today and add in a car, you can (legally) travel 200 miles in under 3 hours (without traffic jams )

Our current line of thinking is that Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and the myriad of other presence applications are enabling us to remove the constraint of travel, and particularly with video, enabling us to participate virtually, or through the 4th dimension.

We’ve discussed the possibility of the Internet being the 4th dimension, but with hindsight, recognise that it is just the medium, since it’s not exclusive to 4th dimensional working.  I’ve also been thinking about telephony and its implication in 4th dimensional living.  Due to it’s ubiquity, telephony is taken for granted as a communication tool, and with the massive uptake of mobile telephony in recent years, it’s exceptional in modern society to consider someone not having access to a telephone.

Yet, I can remember my grandparents getting their first telephone line installed by British Telecom in 1979.  It was interesting socially because they never wanted to use it to call any relatives in the same town, but were overjoyed when speaking to family in different parts of the world.  It’s this element of transcending time that I’m particularly interested in.

Another technology that I use frequently is logmein.  Once configured, this gives me remote access to a computer as if I was sitting in front of it.  It’s another example of the requirement to have the user and the device in the same physical location being removed.  Trancending time.

It could be that this is a form of time travel in that you save time by not travelling.  I’m going to coin the phrase ‘time stay‘ to cover this class of operations.

Thoughts and feedback welcome.