"10 Timeframes"

Paul Ford gave a closing keynote and put the transcript online. He discusses time in a lot of different contexts: time in seconds, time in decades, time in heartbeats. It’s a very interesting way to look at things:

So how do you spend nanoseconds [in a computer]? If you have trillions of them to spend you use them for all sorts of stuff. You add shadows under windows to give the illusion of depth. You make it possible for someone to watch a streaming movie in one window while they write a computer program in another. You let people do a lot of stuff at once, and you make the machine do a lot of stuff at once in the background. You keep things moving.

Or another timeframe:

When you get on a plane and travel you go 15 heartbeats per mile. That is, in the time it takes to travel a mile in flight your heart beats 15 times. On a train your heart might beat 250 times per mile.

I’d strongly recommend giving it a read – maybe that’s just because I find time a fascinating concept.