The Time Machine Stops

As of this writing, 1653744144847 milliseconds have elapsed since midnight on January 1, 1970, the start of the “Unix Epoch,” so named for the operating system upon which the internet is based. While that date was chosen arbitrarily, it also denotes the onset of “computime,” which Jeremy Rifkin calls “the final abstraction of time and its complete separation from human experience and rhythms of nature.” This chapter explores this notion of computime from within the computer in the form of a dialogue set in the future, which takes place inside of a game that simulates nature. The religious scholar James Carse divided games into two types: “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” One has temporal boundaries, the other eliminates them; one is defined externally by “world time,” the other defines time internally through the gameplay. Now the world outside of the computer begins to look finite: the passage of time appears as a form of energy that is progressively being dispersed, and when it has been exhausted, the game is over.