One night, I was lying on my bed, trying to sleep while my brain cranks into overdrive.

I was pondering upon the concept of space-time, worm-holes (and how it doesnt make sense to be a real “wormhole” kindda thing, if its a bending of space time) and what it would be like for a being visualizing the 4th Dimension (if that dimension is time).

This is also how I visualize space time, instead of the common visualisation of it like a 2D flat

You see, the whole concept of time is that – it is always moving forward, and never backwards (or could it be stopped). And that whatever had happened, happened. What is past, will go into our collective memory as something of the past and its probably recorded somewhere somehow, perhaps even by some uber one.

I started to hypothesize – if our existence and understanding of ‘reality’ is similar to a game character living in the game’s 3d world, dictating by pre-programmed physics and limitations; or perhaps, a reality of the internet’s every moment – growing endlessly, content created and destroyed all the time. In reality, what makes reality a reality is the fact that things moved, more information is created, some information is deleted – things changes states. Similar to the internet, websites are spawned, text amended, web pages deleted, news added, collective knowledge grows… And “TIME” is the moment in which these things are happening.

When you type a blog post like I am now, and updates it – its akin to us saying something to someone in real life. That exchange of data is reality – its time. And time runs faster when the exchange of data slows down, and the time runs slower when the exchange of data hasten (which results in the theory of relativity, where the closer you are to the speed of light, time slows down for that person; even though time continues at the same rate beyond – as a result, the relative difference means that the person moving faster ages slower). And it is when we are doing something, thinking of something, something is changing – is time observable. Time is perceived as our Sun streaks across the sky, and the stars moves from horizon to horizon. It is when we move from point A to point B, in relations to the position of the Sun in the sky or the hand of the watch on our wrist that we perceived time had past.

And thus by understanding that creation, destruction and change dictates time – thus when the internet evolves and iterates – thus “time” of a different plane/universe can be observed. But internet differs to our reality slightly… because we are in control of the internet. And history and information are mostly retained on the internet, until the alternate reality (our reality) ran out of juice to keep that content online – and thus it gets destroyed.

But you see, if history is recorded, and everything being posted is saved somewhere in this collective universe, we call internet – how would the “we” as a 3D game characters in a persistent world game understood that?

Like in the movie Interstellar, how could Cooper (the main character/astronaut) have been able to envision and understand a 4th dimension where time is no longer a limitation – in which you can “pop in” and “see” any time of the past – although, for the movie, he can only “pop in” at his daughter’s room, behind the shelf; and no where else. (which is another extension of how limited he is). How do you show / visualise the 4th dimension to that 3D game character, in order for him to understand that, the MMO world that he exist in, is just a blip in the ultra universe of the cyber world and the internet. How could he possibly understand and comprehend the enormity of what’s beyond him?

To understand this “4th dimensional power” – its akin to us going to Google.com and typing a search term. The results listed IS the power of the 4th Dimension – the ability to go back to any time in the past and revisits it; and perhaps even making changes to it. But if the internet-is-the-4th-dimension-hypothesis is true – it technically means that, the power to go back in time to alter anything in the past MAY OR MAY NOT result in a Butterfly Effect for the future. It perhaps would, but the 3D Being in the game world may not see it as “the history” change and in a split second his memory changes (or maybe yes) – but the change will be a “present” change rather than a change to the past. If a trigger is set for the world to go back to the Ice Age, then in reality, what we would observe would be a sudden drop in temperature and the onset of a severe freezing climate. It MAY or MAY NOT cause a collective memory change that, “it had always been so cold”; it may simply be “why does it suddenly turn so cold?”.

But the Butterfly Effect isnt what I want to talk about now (perhaps can be left to a future post); but the idea that, the visualization of the 4th dimension would not be a “I SEE EVERYTHING AT THE SAME TIME” kindda thing – but its simply for a being to have to ability to go to any web page in the internet, and view the content at that very moment in a static format (in case you forgot why this is the case: because time is change, creation and destruction – you need the element of “something happening” for time to exist).

So how the game character, you may ask, be in the “present” all the time; since time is creation, destruction and change. This is because, if you understand how the programming works in the background, data is processed and exchanged trillions and gazillion times every second while we are playing our this game character. New data is constantly transmitted to the server, saved in our RAM, and data are received and interact with the data/processes that are currently happening in the user’s computer, since servers are used for many things now a days, from gaming to working in businesses and you can find dedicated servers in cities as New York at sites like https://www.servermania.com/dedicated-servers-new-york.htm which work perfectly for this. As we play, data are discarded and destroyed in our RAM while required data are constantly kept alive or even updated, as we move our game character through the game world. This very dynamic exchange of data and information is time. And if TIME = DATA, and DATA can be retrieved (unless its already destroyed) – then we can always “Search” and “Find” any data that had been generated by the “Reality” – and thus retrieving any DATA (or you can call it TIME).

And thus if DATA = TIME. Data do not change its state on its own, nor does it recreates itselves on its own, or self destruct on its own. Thus “TIME” do not change, duplicates or destroys itself. But that being said, you can now also realised that “Time” can be duplicated, creating parallel universes / alternate universes – but however, the very action of duplicating Time, affects the very reality that this universe exist. Because remember? Creation of “Time” is Reality. Thus the idea of “parallel universe” does not technically exist – because its technically not possible – as it will exist in the same reality as “reality”. And we have to also understand that, no 2 data can be in the exact same spot in our RAM/harddisk – thus have 2 exact same things happening, does not mean it exist in the same exact location in the Universe. Time can be duplicated, creating a parallel universe, but the parallel universe will exist in the same reality as the “first universe”. Thus similarly, Alternate Universe / Reality also resides in the same Reality.

But a TRUE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE is possible. Imagine an Intranet vs the Internet. While the 3D game character resides in the reality of our Internet, a 3D game character that resides in a totally cut off world of the Intranet would very well be plausible. You can never take away that very possibility that a Universe beyond our own could very well exist, in such a mode; and that it could be like what the scientists says – governed by a totally different set of rules and matters.

So for me, what’s next on this very topic is to conceptualise/hypothesize further on :
– Wormhole (and how it should be VS what is being theorized at the moment)
– Time Travel / Butterfly Effect (as discussed above)
– Beyond the Dimension of “Time” (how many dimensions can be find using the Internet/Computer hypothesis)

If you are interested in these topics or what I have written above, feel free to contact me on Twitter @limmingji. I would love to hear from you!