According to Wikipedia, the arrow of time is a term coined by British astronomer Arthur Eddington to distinguish between two types of physical processes:

Physical processes at the microscopic level are believed to be either entirely or mostly time symmetric, meaning that the theoretical statements that describe them remain true if the direction of time is reversed; yet when we describe things at the macroscopic level it often appears that this is not the case: there is an obvious direction (or flow) of time. An arrow of time is anything that exhibits such time-asymmetry.

Put another way:

Any process that happens regularly in the forward direction of time but rarely or never in the opposite direction, such as entropy increasing in an isolated system, defines what physicists call an arrow of time in nature.

There are also some helpful rules about the arrow of time:

1) It is vividly recognized by consciousness.
2) It is equally insisted on by our reasoning faculty, which tells us that a reversal of the arrow would render the external world nonsensical.
3) It makes no appearance in physical science except in the study of organization of a number of individuals.

More on the arrow of time, including a great interview with Caltech theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, here at The Long Now Blog.

Word watch: “urban prairie.” Meaning when “vast tracts of formerly urbanized land return to nature.” Is this what should happen in Detroit? Some architects think so: “The American Institute of Architects produced a study that called for Detroit to shrink back to its urban core and a selection of urban villages, surrounded by greenbelts and banked land” (via NYTimes Ideas Blog).

This relates to something I’ve been pondering lately, which is admittedly not a new question, but basically the gist is: how will we know when we’ve overdeveloped the earth? Are we capable of that observation? Have too many of us built too much, used too much, interfered too much, taken too much? It seems like the tragedy of the commons might suggest one answer: we won’t know and won’t care. If we compare this predicament to what’s happened on Wall Street over the past year, there’s a similar human fault at work in both cases: greed. And to fix it, you’ve got to build an assumption of greed into the system. Quoting Warren Buffett: “The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.”

But, if I were to take a slightly more optimistic tack on this as we exit The Decade from Hell, I’d say building greed into the system is precisely where the opportunity lies for the next quantum leap in human understanding. And what’s great about that is that these sorts of leaps tend to happen precisely when we invent new ways to describe what we see. Paintings were flat, then algebra, then—boom!—Giotto. “Bad air” caused pandemics, then better maps, then—boom!—Dr. John Snow. We now have the most powerful tools for observing collective human action ever created. Let’s start using them to figure out how much is enough.

Starting this weekend on Governor’s Island in New York, eleven former officer’s houses will be converted into activity centers for a festival that celebrates Dutch design, fashion, and architecture. The project is called Pioneers of Change, part of NY400 Week / Holland on the Hudson festival, which marks “400 years of enduring friendship between the Netherlands and the United States.”

Pioneers of Change will include a fashion house, an urban farm, a slow food restaurant, and an affordable giftshop. There will also be an exhibition by designer and artist Maarten Baas, who will show pieces from his “real time” series. To get a feel for these amazing sculptures, check them out on YouTube here, here, and here.

Two readings on the economics of attention. First, last week Design Observer posted Michael Erard’s A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention. The takeaway from this article will surely be Erard’s suggestion that we start “attention festivals: week-long multimedia, cross-industry carnivals of readings, installations, and performances, where you go from a tent with 30-second films, guitar solos, 10-minute video games, and haiku to the tent with only Andy Warhol movies, to a myriad of venues with other media forms and activities requiring other attention lengths.”

But, as creatively playful as that might be, I was most interested in the end of his essay, where he speculates on the price of attention:

I’m inspired by Lewis Hyde in The Gift, who says that what distinguishes commodities is that they’re used up, but what distinguishes gifts is that they circulate—the gift is never trapped, consumed, used up, contained or confined. That seems like the best basis for cultural production to thrive.

Erard’s starting point is Chris Anderson’s Free, and he describes Anderson’s concept of “free” as “the gift’s ugly negation.” A very thoughtful point, and one both Cory Doctorow and I have tried to make as well.

Second, via Fred Wilson, comes this article by John Hagel, in which he describes the article The Attention Economy and the Net, written by Michael Goldhaber. Here’s Hagel:

Goldhaber is close to viewing attention as a flow, rather than a stock—something that must continually be refreshed, if it is to be maintained. One can only continue to attract full attention if one offers something new along the way.

These are two sides of the same coin, of course. But I like the contrast of stock to flow, especially in business contexts like Anderson’s where “stock” is a more native term. Stock is static value, but the value of flow is only maintained through constant circulation.