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2.5.1. Inventing with Time

How To Invent (Almost) Anything > 2.5.1. Inventing with Time

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To invent with time, build on Fig. 2.13 to discover how time affects what we do and where we can improve the quality of people’s lives through letting them make better use of their time. You can change the order in which things happen, how they relate over time, when they start and stop and whether they happen at all.

What happens when you are watching a television program and the phone rings? You have two things that you want to do at the same time. Could you link the phone to the video system, so picking up the phone mutes the TV sound and starts the video recorder? What if the TV could tell the phone to tell the person to call back in 40 minutes when the show finished?

Fig. 2.13 Inventing with time

Play with time. Can you speed up time or slow it down? Many people would pay handsomely for even the perception of changing time. I would like waiting in queues to speed up and eating chocolate to go very slowly. Could you give me something interesting to do while waiting? How could you change the composition of food to make the taste linger longer?

Think about fantasies and visions. What would an ideal world look like in ten, twenty, fifty years time? Go into the future and look back: how did you get there? What are the steps? How could you shorten the sequence by doing things in parallel or not at all? How could you share time with other people?

Fig. 2.14 Playing with time
 

Other sections in this chapter:

• 2.1. What is Science?
• 2.2. Science and Energy
• 2.3. Science and Matter
• 2.4. Science and Space
• 2.5. Science and Time
• 2.6. Simple Science in Non-science
• 2.7. Invention 'So What?'

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