Senses of Time and Place

Sight is one of the most heavily used senses today.  Travel is accomplished with the help of traffic signs of different colors or displays of flights and their pending arrival or departure.  Even pedestrians utilize street signs for their location and required directions.  Cell phones and tablets require custom settings to be activated and the occasional additional app to be installed so owners unable to see the touchscreen can still enjoy their devices.  While many art museums feature audio tours, they tend to describe the life of the artist or history of the painting and not the beauty of the piece itself.  Magazines and other publications try to boost their sales by featuring covers that are pleasing to the eye or broadcasting controversial headlines.  A difference between the amount of movement detected by the eyes and the motion sensitive inner ear is what causes motion sickness.  These are just some examples of the importance of the information our brains receive from our eyes.

The recent release of Daredevil on Netflix got me thinking about how much can be learned about the surrounding world without being able to see.  Even without enhanced senses, much can be gleaned about obstacles ahead by listening to the effects solid objects have on sounds in the area.  A number of blind folks have developed a navigation technique that takes advantage of echolocation.

The post today attempts to describe a normal daily activity while using only the senses of hearing, smell, touch, and taste.

It was a wonderful spring morning.  The warmth of the sun emerged through the windows as I walked across the smooth tile floor of the kitchen.  My bare feet had received a slight shock when I stepped from the carpet of my bedroom hall onto the chill of the ceramic tiles of the kitchen.  The difference was noticeable, but not as drastic as an early winter morning would provide.

My toes rested familiarly in the gentle roughness of the grouted groove between the tiles that were lined up in front of my refrigerator.  Opening it up, I heard the gentle clatter of glass on glass from the shifting bottles on the shelves of the door.  A cool draft filled with the smells of box of oranges placed on the bottom shelf blew across my face.  Reaching in, I felt for the round tub of butter where I usually left it.  Finding the smooth plastic, I reached around it to make sure its size and shape were what I expected.  I set the butter on the shelf next to the fridge and grabbed the second jar on the right from the top shelf of the door.  Removing the lid, I gave the contents a sniff to make sure it was the orange marmalade that I was in the mood for.  It took spooning grape jelly instead of pickle relish on a hot dog for me to learn that a jar sitting where I expected it doesn't mean the jar would necessarily contain what I was looking for.  That was certainly one of the more interesting hot dogs I've ever eaten.

Stepping through the warm spot formed by the sun again, I stopped for a second to warm my feet up and savor the start of a potentially nice day.  Finally, I arrived at the larger counter I used for preparing my meals.  Reaching forward with a well practiced motion, I grabbed the smooth glass knob of my breadbox.  My fingers traced along the first plastic bag of bread they found.  Finding the front of the bag, I felt the plastic clip holding it closed.  That clip told me the bread was white bread, not the wheat I wanted to toast.  Finding another bag, I felt the twist tie that meant this bag contained the type of bread I desired.

The kitchen was filled with the scent of warm wheat as I pulled a knife from a nearby drawer and opened the butter and marmalade.  The satisfying "tunk" of the toaster told me my breakfast was perfectly warmed just as a light rumble from my stomach informed me it was time to eat.  The hard wooden handle of the butter knife hardly moved in my hand as I drew it across the soft butter.  A long, light crunching sound reached my ears as I moved the butter-coated knife along the stiff bread.  Another soft rumble emerged from my stomach as I buttered the second slice.  The scent of sweetness and oranges reached my nose as a layer of marmalade followed the butter.  With one hand, I reached out and dropped the knife in the area I knew the sink to be.  The clatter of metal blade on metal basin told me I was right on target, once again.  My other hand brought one of the coated slices of toast unerringly towards my mouth.  I took a big bite of the crispy bread.  My mouth was filled with the creamy texture and sweet citrus flavor of my chosen toppings.

Now that my empty stomach had been filled, it was time to get the day started.  The sounds of beeping alarms and shifting bed springs indicated that my roommates would be up soon.  I left the butter and marmalade on the counter where the others could see them.  I returned to my room and prepared myself for whatever the world had in store.  It did seem odd to me that the only one in the house up early enough to enjoy a sunrise was the only one that couldn't see it's colors.

If you were to go blind, what is the one sight you think you would truly miss?  With descriptive audio tracks on movies and television shows, books in braille, crosswalk signals with audio cues, and text-to-speech apps, do you think there is more that could be done for the sightless to help them enjoy the modern world?

Time has come....

Time has been a part of tales and stories as long as people have been passing tales from one generation to the next.  Rip Van Winkle could be said to be the first time traveler, although his trip was accidental and unfortunately only in one direction.  Since then, many other authors and story tellers have explored the options of moving back and forth through the passages of Time itself.  Some books have been about a single person exploring the past and future, others about groups large and small making the trip across the temporal borders that separate today from yesterday and tomorrow.  Entire entertainment franchises have been built around making trips through time itself and the unique perks and problems these trips involve.

Thanks in part to modern physicists like Einstein and Hawking, a tool for modern authors exists that can make time travel more feasible and technological.  Approaching the speed of light would alter the flow of time one experiences in relation to those moving through the universe at a more mundane pace.  As one travels at speeds approaching the speed of light, time would move more slowly for the traveler than for those at home.  This takes place today.  Some satellites in orbit travel at such a high rate of speed, their clocks must be periodically reset or they would go out of sync with ground control.

With this in mind, it is entirely possible for a living "time capsule" to be developed.  Something like the discs loaded on the Voyager, a ship with a small crew and filled with cultural data could be set on a course to deep space and back to Earth at an extremely high rate of speed.  This would allow them to share modern viewpoints with anthropologists and researchers hundreds of generations down the road.  Imagine how much more we as a society might know if members of some of the lost civilizations like the Mayans, the Moai builders of Easter Island, or the residents of the temple in Angkor Wat were still around today to explain how they viewed their worlds.

I make this recording as a part of the permanent log of the spacecraft Hartnell as a part of "Operation: Van Winkle."  We were about two-thirds of the way through a mission with very simple parameters.  All we had to do was accelerate to a speed that approached the speed of light, coast for a few years, then return to Earth and quickly decelerate.  There we would share with the population the shared knowledge, values, and societal norms of the planet we left.  While just over a couple of decades would have passed for us, numerous generations would have passed for those back home.  Our crew would be the first time capsule that could explain the importance of the past to those that "dug it up."

The 50 members of the crew all had experience in multiple disciplines including electronics, engineering, communications, biology, and even some linguistics.  Over the first few relative of the 25 we were away from Earth, we all shared our knowledge with each other.  This was done for two reasons.  One was intentional, to make each one of us a backup contingency in case one or more members of the crew fell to some unexpected illness.  In the beginning, it also gave us something to do to fill the endless hours as our ship accelerated through empty space.  Nothing more was required of us than double checking our position and course and ensuring the environmental systems were still functioning.  All of the members of the crew were selected for their patience and ability to remain focused despite numerous possible distractions.

One major advantage of our "cargo" was the nearly endless supply of entertainment in a multitude of languages and genres.  Mornings would be spent performing simple maintenance on the ship and its systems.  Books, movies, and music we consumed during most afternoons, depending on the preference of the individual or plans for later.  Debates and discussions filled the evenings.  Comparisons were made between comedic movies from Korea and Japan.  The progression of science fiction in relation to actual scientific advances was a topic of many conversations.  Even the definition, content, and distribution of pornography made for more than a couple nights' late night topics.  In order to further clarify what we had for future generations, we recorded ourselves so that our words could be added to the library of culture that was to be shared.

The last 16 years had taught us a lot about each other and the shared history of all of humanity.  There was still enough for us to learn even more over the next 9 years.  Even the relative isolation from other crew members forced on us by the rapid deceleration during the last year and a half of our trip will be filled with final log entries, summaries of our explorations into our "cargo," and attempts to communicate with the current residents of Earth.  As much as we could hope that records of our existence would last hundreds of years, none of us really expected that to be the case.

Time capsules have been buried for all kinds of lengths of time in all manner of containers and places.  Why not one for all of humanity in space?

When you think of time travel, what is the first franchise that comes to mind?  Leave a comment and let me know.