Blockchain, black magic and event ontology Interview with Alexander Boldachev

Alexander Boldachev is a Russian philosopher, futurologist (member of the Association of Futurologists of Russia), author of books and articles on universal evolutionism, biological evolution, philosophy of artificial intelligence, temporal ontology, epistemology, and logic. System architect and analyst of blockchain applications, author of articles on the problems of trust technologies, eGovernment, web 3.0, semantic modeling of complex systems, speaker of many specialized conferences.

What Quine (and Carnap) Might Say about Contemporary Metaphysics of Time

This chapter explores the relations between Quine’s and Carnap’s metaontological stances on the one hand, and contemporary work in the metaphysics of time on the other. Contemporary metaphysics of time, like analytic metaphysics in general, grew out of the revival of the discipline that Quine’s critique of the logical empiricists made possible. At the same time, the metaphysics of time has in some respects strayed far from its Quinean roots. This chapter examines some likely Quinean and Carnapian reactions to elements of the contemporary scene. The main claim is that contemporary temporal metaphysics is characterized by a degree of metaphysical seriousness that goes beyond anything found in either Carnap or Quine. The chapter also suggests that there are affinities between Carnapian approaches to temporal ontology and deflationary attitudes towards the question of whether time passes.

Smearing time: Critical temporality and corporate ontology

Since 1972 a leap second has been introduced into global time standardization systems, due to the discrepancy between Coordinated Universal Time and International Atomic Time. Until recently, the leap second has been a consensual, if mildly uncanny adjustment, a para-governmental temporal wobble. Google's explanation of its actions with regard to the insertion of a leap second smeared into its Network Time Protocol servers is couched in terms of a period extending initially over 20 h, ultimately reaching 24 h. Google is intent on taking ownership of the smear and transducing it into a technologically stabilised change. Although there are a number of different strategies of smearing time, Google advocates for its standard smear that it wants other digital giants like Bloomberg, Amazon and Microsoft to replicate. In this paper we first analyze Google's temporal strategy in terms of its affinities and departures from the classical view of time in Aristotle's core considerations in the Physics Book IV, in terms of a consonant enumeration but in our example at variable speeds/intervals, and then in terms of Wolfgang Ernst's conception of time-critical media. Leap seconds conform to Ernst's sense of kairotic time, an auspicious micro-moment that is both techno-mathematically pre-defined and decisive for ensuring operationality. Google executes smeared time-critical processes but wants to establish mastery over the measurement and manipulation of humanly imperceptible microtemporal events by inhabiting temporal ontology itself, proposing its practice, based on misleading its servers, as a model for other digital hegemons.

Is Time out of Joint?

This chapter argues that we are not at the terminal end of the modern time regime but merely at the beginning of its renewal. Before sketching out the main features of this renewal, the chapter first considers the disorientation and uncertainty that accompanies this temporal reorientation. Like William Shakespeare's Hamlet at the beginning of the Renaissance four hundred years ago, we are today being confronted with a change of temporal ontology. Here, Hamlet's cry, “The time is out of joint!” is an alarming diagnosis that has been steadily intensifying since the beginning of the twenty-first century. And as this chapter shows, it has only become more and more deafening.

Concepts of Time in Late Modernity

This chapter demonstrates how the problems of “polar inertia” and its implications have been the subject of intensified philosophical reflection and debate since the 1980s. Polar inertia is the condition in which we have arrived at a temporal limit. However, we have also arrived at the absolute dead end of the modern time regime, in terms of both its compatibility with the rhythms of human life and the logic internal to the dynamics it has unleashed. The positions taken all grapple with the aporias, or inner contradictions, of the modern temporal regime and its possible alternatives or compensations. However, they do not lose sight of the epistemic presuppositions of this temporal ontology in the process.