Overheard on NPR, this morning (well, yesterday afternoon, in NPRland): Lynda Barry (cartoonist, author and one-time romantic interest of Matt Groening) is talking about someone else's innovation on the time-machine concept, with the introduction of a "meanwhile knob." Not much detail is provided as to how the "meanwhile knob" works, but I'm deeply intrigued. I've long thought that a good time-machine should include more than just a simple "front-back" control. I've long enjoyed the Heinleinian conception of a multidimensional "alternate-universes" control, where you can go back or forward not just to "your" past or future, but, by missing the correct calibration, end up in infinitely variant alternatives as well.
But the idea of a "meanwhile knob" is even more interesting. I think for Barry, based on the context of her comments, it's intended to capture the fact that "inside time" – how we perceive time and carry it around with us – things are in fact rather non-linear. You can have multiple narratives going: the immediate outside-your-body surroundings, the recent memorable event being reviewed, the historical novel in front of you, the upcoming meeting which you're planning out in your head. So a time machine with a meanwhile knob suddenly becomes as much a device for altering consciousness as one that somehow alters physical reality. Which, of course, given the physics of time travel, may, in fact, be the more plausible way to take on time travel.
Meanwhile, I'm going to get another cup of coffee. I have an intense day coming up, at work. More bigwigs will be visiting our English classroom – there's going to be an "opening ceremony" along with a demonstration class that I and my coteachers will have to do. Someone (read: the nuclear power plant people) has put a huge amount of money into this poorly-designed, high-tech language classroom, and now they want to see how it worked out – it's up to us to make it look good.