As the Present Passes: An Essay on Time
A First Essay on Maturana's Time. Volume 1, Essay 4.
Introduction
What follows is an interpretation of time derived from the work of Humberto Maturana. Maturana’s perspective on time, spread mainly across one letter and one article, has interesting and important implications for relating to the present in both personal and professional life. Central to his viewpoint on time is the idea of “zero time,” presented as biological in nature (Maturana, 2008). The essential components of zero time are presented below, offered primarily as an alternative means for understanding and relating to human experience while engaging in craft-based activities.
This work and its interpretations were first presented at the 2024 Colorado Wildland Fire Conference in Snowmass, Colorado.
The Passing Present Does not Always Happen in Time
In what other ways could the present pass if not in time? Zero time is presented here as an alternative approach to the passing present in (time) for select members of an enterprise, a type of social system or, more accurately, a socio-technical system. In an enterprise where inflows are transformed into outflows that generate revenue, cultural time, which in this case is chronological “clock time”, is still needed at the management level and higher. However, zero time may be appropriate for those in the system who are engaged in activities that can be defined as craft, whether coding, having conversations, or otherwise designing. The members of the system who are engaged in craft should do so in zero time so as not to be encumbered with often distracting and panic-inducing clock time to open a wider space for craft activities. Still, it may be necessary for those who are living in clock time to manage those in zero time.
Chronological time grants total primacy to the passing of seconds, minutes, and hours, which tell the observer how much time has passed - the passing of time is in the watch. Zero time, on the other hand, is centered entirely on the continuously changing present of the environment.
We human beings find ourselves existing in the present, in a continuously changing present, when we ask ourselves how we exist (Maturana, 2005, pp. 56-57).
In zero time, the width of the continuously changing present relates to the craft-based task at hand. For example, the continuously changing present of cutting down a single tree with a chainsaw is far narrower than a sales conversation or designing a web page. Granting the continuously changing present primacy changes how the present is experienced, including its duration. What matters is not an external device that lays time over experience, but the observation of the present as it continuously changes and what happens within it.
Duration in the continuously changing present is experienced through watching the progression of transformation of objects, processes, relationships, and humans over time. The appearance of an entity marks the first referent, while marked points in their transformation serve as subsequent referents through which duration can be experienced and the velocity of change determined, which is relative to the observer. Several moving referents provide multiple durations. The continuously changing present passes, not in time, but through the experience of craft in a continuously changing present.
The continuous present is far from hollow. It is filled with the shifting totality of what the human observes as the present changes. To be immersed in the changing present with no sense of cultural time is to be in the flow of the changing present, with change both initiated by the observer as well as sources within the environment of the continuously changing present. Like seconds, minutes, and hours in clock time, in zero time, only the continuously changing present is relevant, including its contents, flow, smoothness, velocity, meaning, patterns, interactions, the creation of new knowledge, communicating, designing, and exploring. The continuously changing present is far from empty. Rather than living in watches, those who operate in the continuously present change live in it with all of its variables.
If prosaic clocks that are dwelt in throughout the day assist in producing feelings of dread, anxiety, and fear, living in the continuously changing present is a more pure, unadulterated, poetic, less anxiety-provoking mode of existence. Zero time is centered around the absence of time as the observer is immersed in what is, without the feelings of time compression or clock involvement. There is still experience of duration, contingent upon the referents the observer selects and their memory and attention.
Again, zero time is for those who are engaged in some form of craft-based activity that ought not to be measured by clocks, especially when the total time of production is unknown and the work is highly interactive such as the case with conversations that ebb and flow, come in and out with the tide, go left and then right and then left again. Compressing the process affects the means and, by consequence, the ends. Not everyone in an organization should make use of zero time, nor would there likely be a “pure” zero time without periodic engagements with cultural chronological time. Still, zero time would comprise the overwhelming majority of the experience of the continuously changing present for those who adopt it. Zero time is thought to increase attention, engagement, sense-making abilities, and the creation of constellations of events.
The Past & The Future
Maturana (2008) writes, “We human beings exist in the present, in a continuously changing present, the past and the future do not exist as such, and they are manners of being now, in the present” (p.2). As it is adapted to fit zero time here, in the continuously changing present, the past is an explanation of how the present arrived. Maturana (2005) explains: “We invented the notion of past as a negative dimension in the imagined space that we call time to be to be able to explain how is it that we become as we are at any moment in the flow of our continuous change in our here and now” (p.60). The size and significance of the past and future are relative to the breadth of the continuously changing present being observed and considered in zero time and its velocity, complexity, and chaos.
The future in zero time is presented in two different ways in the literature. Maturana (2008) imagines the following: “The future is a manner of living now in the proposition of what would happen if the operational coherences of the present being lived now are conserved in the continuously changing present being lived” (p.2). In the 2005 article, Maturana writes, “the future is an image that we live now of how our now will be transformed” (p.57). There is a tension between conserving the coherences of daily life into the future (the continuously changing present being lived) and positing the future as an image of the coherences being lived, transformed. This tension is not resolved in Maturana’s writings about time, though it has the value of inspiring observers to think about multiple futures their craft or its outputs may have to function in. For example, what if everything stayed the same? What if our daily being was transformed? What if the future moves at a higher velocity? What if the complexity increases?
As Maturana (2008) mentioned earlier, the past and the future are ways of being in the here and now, the nowness of the continuously changing present. Either the past or the future can be folded into the present as a manner of dwelling in it. In certain instances, it may be prudent to pull more of the future into the present to consider how the coherences of everyday living may be transformed or conserved moving forward, and what to design for. Being in the past in the present may be ideal for reflecting on how the enterprise arrived where it is or interrogating the past, so the same mistakes are not made in the now.
Time as a Spatial Dimension
Time is introduced in Maturana (2005/2008) as an imaginary spatial dimension: “Time is an imaginary spatial dimension, created to explain the course of the flow of change in a changing present” (Maturana, 2005, p.60). Traditional chronological time places events as exactly when they occurred, drawn out in a straight line: “to spatialise time, seeing it as linear moving it in one direction” (Willis, 2021, p.78). For cultural clock time movement, exclusively linearized is correct. It is mechanically possible to turn time backwards chronologically, but this is only an isolated example that has no implications for cultural time as a totality. Time marches on.
In zero time, it is appropriate to suspend the constraint of time moving in one direction and grant the observer the ability to manipulate constellations of cause and effect, relationality, influence, and meaning retrospectively, in the continuously changing present. The observer may find that the constellations they laid over the past and present are in need of modification, as they did not give way to desirable action, were found to be misunderstandings, or ordered elements in the wrong way. Re-constellating takes place in the nowness of the continuously changing present. Modifying relationships overlaid on the past, no matter how recent, will change how the continuously changing present is conceived and the future is projected.
Chronological time places events in the order in which they happen. Zero time approached in this way puts events in order of which they matter and make sense. This “mattering” may take events out of the chronological story and rearrange them as they truly matter and make sense to the continuously changing present, its past, and its future. Constellations can be made that place recent events in the past, as they effectively change the perception of everything that has already happened, and influence elements in the continuously changing present, or link phenomena in the present together in whatever order they drive understanding. Through time (or something like it), the past can be modified needfully to constructively change how events are understood in the continuously changing present. Ordering in the future may entail constructing understandings that can steer or influence its emergence, and also provide an input into the present of what a desirable future looks like. The past and future are manners of the being in the here and now of the continuously changing present and entirely variable based on the observer’s preferences and needs. A linear conception of time is just that, a conception. Zero time is an alternative viewpoint to consider.
Conclusion
The above has explored a perspective on (possibly forgotten) zero time. There are many other theories on time, but zero time is one worth the investment due to its suspension of cultural chronological time in favor of the experience of dwelling in the continuously changing present, where referents and memory measure duration. Zero time’s continuously changing present draws focus to what is happening here and now, and selectively how the nowness relates to the past and present. Juxtaposed to living the fear, compression, anxiety, and hurry that accompany living in clocks, dwelling in the continuously changing present is concerned with what is presently happening and how it is changing. Zero time’s focus on the continuously changing present engenders increased engagement and awareness of the craft-based activity and external factors related to it. Zero time is concerned with the flow of what is and, at times, what might be and what has been in relation to the shifting here and now. Informal experiments indicate that zero time does, in fact, remove the worry that cultural time boxes can put in place, increases interactions with others, and makes one more aware of processes such as the weather. With no time bounds, exploration can proceed at any length.
As mentioned earlier, zero time is not intended for all members of an enterprise, nor is it for every occasion. If some members of the enterprise are engaging in craft-based tasks, especially explorative ones, where the ends and means are unknown, such as in the development of a new technology may make great use of zero time. However arbitrary, managers should be aware of the chronological time investment that has gone into the development of the new technology. Meanwhile, designers and developers in zero time put forth effort to avoid Maturana’s (2008) “shadow theater” and relate the right events, causes, effects, processes, influences, and meaning through the creation of constellations that connect elements in the present but also span across the past and future. In zero time, time is not fiercely linearized, and the past can be modified for the purpose of giving it, the present, and the future, different significance that can be operationalized in different ways.
References
Maturana, H. R. (2005). The origin and conservation of self‐consciousness: Reflections on four questions by Heinz von Foerster. Kybernetes, 34(1/2), 54-88. doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920510575744
Maturana, H. R. (2008). Time: An imaginary spatial dimension or: Life occurs in the no-time of a continuously changing present. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 15(1), 83-92.
Willis, A.-M. (2021). The designing of time. In T. Fry & A. Nocek (Eds.), Design in crisis: New worlds, philosophies, and practices (pp. 74-88). London, England: Routledge.