Real Time is a Myth

Believe it or not, there really is no such thing as real time. There are a few reasons for this:

· The speed of light is finite

· The speed of sound is finite

· It takes the brain time to process things

· Quantum effects

· The speed of light in a medium is 2/3rds of what it is in a vacuum

If you cannot observe events at the actual speed limit of the universe, then it is entirely impossible to observe events the instant they occur. The speed of sound is relatively slow, so any sound you observe is certainly not happening in real time. The brain certainly does not work in real time. Quantum effects is a whole fun topic unto itself. I am not nearly educated enough in physics to explain what exactly is happening on a quantum level in terms of a human’s perception of space time. I do know that quantum effects do impact our perception of reality and knowing that effect is there is enough to understand that human perception is behind the advancing edge of reality. The last bullet is particularly important when we are talking about information systems. Signal has to travel over a wire. Ones and zeros have to be written to disk. There is a speed limit when it comes to transferring information over a computer network.

All of that adds up to the reality that it is virtually impossible to observe events as they are actually occurring. So, any definition that we develop has to take that reality into account.

If you do the math, for every foot you are away from an event, you are viewing that event one nanosecond in the past. If you are at a conference and you are seated in the back of the room, what you are actually seeing is what the speaker was doing 50 nanoseconds ago. Does the brain care about 50 nanoseconds? No. But that is why your perception of real time is merely an illusion.

Since there really is no such thing as real time, we can let go of rigid physics definitions of reality and develop a definition of real time that is more practical as it applies to information systems.