PCW+Week+5



I was just thinking about the different ways we perceive time and thought it might be interesting to post a little of my research here. I find it intriguing that time perception can vary across cultures, and that just by seeing this facet of our daily lives differently, we can begin to lead a different life. Especially when time tends to be something that is seen as static and resistant to subjective criteria [Olympic records, fastest this or that in the world...], but when we really think about time - it is malleable. We perceive time and space differently when we are rushed versus when we are bored, sometimes spaces may seem more cramped or too bright when we are in a hurry. I wonder if this phenomena is the same across cultures [maybe it's an adaptive thing, for protection]? Or do some people really have a more consistent view of time [and is this in relation to their lifestyle/ stresses]? I think being in architecture school has given me a unique perspective on time... in a video I found it talks about how annoyed Americans get when their computer starts slow, how we are a people with very little patience, we can't handle waiting. But being in Architecture and being rushed on a daily basis, I've come to cherish the time it takes my computer to boot-up, or the time it takes to make dinner - these are the activities that define my day and make me remember the things outside of school work that I still belong to. So I thought I'd include that interesting[| video] - it touches on some of these topics [and is pretty graphically captivating] and a Wikipedia article about the perception of time [|Chronemics].

- Christianna

Phil Zimbardo (speaker in that video above) is perhaps most famous for having conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment; see http://www.prisonexp.org/ The anthropology of time is a huge and fascinating literature, well reviewed by Nancy Munn (one of its most interesting practitioners here: [|http: www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.000521]