What Time is the Sunrise?

These technologies play on the sense of being out of sync, isolated from a communal time, and suggest that each one of us is responsible for rediscovering the flow of natural time in which we will feel at home once more.

Perhaps the context we find ourselves in determines which default state the mind reverts to. Humans who find themselves disengaged from natural environments may come to know primarily the self-focused default state. Spending time not just indoors, but also on social media, pushes us toward social cognition and, often, rumination. Without regular ti

... See more

If the spaces we imagine to facilitate reconnection with the self also banish the factors that determine who we are — the wider cultural dimensions of the worlds we belong to — then we are condemned to either living falsely, or being alone. Both concepts collapse when one acknowledges that, no matter how far off-grid one travels, there is no place,... See more

Cocooned in metal, hurtling down the time highway, we become spectators rather than participants in the world around us. The landscape blurs into the background as scenery, rather than a crucial, living, breathing part of our existence. Our focus narrows to what’s ahead of us, to what needs to get done.

This speed and insulation creates an emotional... See more

the fundamental problem in the modern era is that we seem to have lost touch with our more sensual side. The increasing amounts of time that those living an urban existence, which is the majority of people these days, spend indoors mean that we are all in danger of losing touch with nature, and the multisensory benefits that it provides. As Marc Tr

... See more