Time, the fourth red-headed stepchild dimension, is a curious thing.
It's inexorable progress leads us towards old age and death.
Yet, how do we even perceive its passage? We remember the way we were.
In the absence of memory, how does time perception change. There is one examples of someone who lost the functioning of their hippocampus, or more broadly the medial temporal lobes. That is to say, it was surgically removed in 1953.
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While this event stamped out his new memory formation, he still has momentary or working memory, and an apparent perception of time passing, along with long term memories from childhood. If all memory were to be removed, perhaps the internal resulting feeling would be a timeless sense of bewilderment.
On a related note, if you want to experience a taste of time reversal, I recommend watching the film "Memento".
Having brought up time reversal, it is interesting to note that physics tends to work equally well backwards in time, as it does forwards, (thermodynamic batteries not included).
Back in time to Discover
Another aspect of time is the incredibly brief flash our lives comprise when put in context of the calculated life of the universe. This has been given as 13 or 14 billion years. By some dictate of evolution and the arrow of time, we fear our future death, but are not concerned at all that we have been dead for all those years preceding our birth. When we go to sleep, those who don't remember their dreams may as well be dead for that time, due to the memory gap. Yet who mourns the dead time lost to the night? Curious creatures, these humans!
"Time, time, time, see what's become of me!"
Another curious thing about time, is that as it passes, our body cells are being replaced so rapidly that the body we call our own has been mostly replaced every four years or so. If you are wondering what it would be like to transplant your consciousness into a computer, look no further. You transplant it into a new vessel all the time, albeit in tiny pieces. You might be more comfortable easing slowly into the computer over a year or two, when the technology arrives. Well, you're already spending enough time in front of one anyway, what's the hangup?!
