The word time is a term used to denote an interval over which the state of matter or energy changes, or an interval between one state of existence and a subsequent state of existence. The way a person perceives and conceptualizes time influences how she consciously interprets information. The American Heritage Dictionary defines time as:

time(tim) n. 1. A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. 2. An interval separating two points on this continuum, measured essentially by selecting a regularly occurring event, such as the sunrise, and counting the number of its occurrences during the interval; duration. 3. A number, as of years, days, or minutes, representing such an interval. 4. A similar number representing a specific point, such as the present, as reckoned from an arbitrary past point on the continuum. 5. a system by which such intervals are measured or such numbers are reckoned.

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Without time, it would be unnecessary and impossible for a person to interpret information. If a person could not experience or observe change, she could not perceive or conceive any limitations beyond those apparent to her through present, instantaneous sensation. Suppose significance is the result of a process that differentiates among elements of a set of information. These differences are acknowledged and valued as the set changes its composition and its relationship to other matter, energy, or information over a particular interval. If this is true, then significance can not develop without time.

Time might be considered a passive force which is around, throughout, inside, and outside all three dimensional space. Time cannot be apprehended or measured as a concrete entity and it cannot be manipulated or changed by humans. Time allows for the separation of all matter and also prevents changes that occur to units within a system, and changes in the structure of the system itself from recurring. Time prevents changes from being reversible.

Each person may have a unique internal sense of time, because one person may observe, recognize and differentiate change in her environment differently than another person. However, all humans are able to share some experiences, like watching the sun come up. Thus, humans can constrain time by connecting it conceptually to the regular cycles of certain physical entities, such as the Earth's revolution around the sun, or the more regular cycles of decay (such as the cycle marked by the half-life of a radioactive element like uranium), and then making regular subdivisions in the duration of these cycles to use as abstract units for describing the duration of the existence of other objects. By relating time to the cycles of physical entities, humans chain time to matter. Matter cannot be physically manipulated outside of time; if it could, the manipulation of matter would have no duration.

If a person wants to track how an area of information changes over an interval of time, she considers its behavior either as a general trend or as an average of the behaviors that define the way it exists at each point in a sequence of points that define that interval. Significant information and meaning can be different at different periods of time, because the relationships between the interpreted area of information, the interpreter, and the source of information change over time.

Suppose I describe the way a representation exists at a given instant as a point. If this unit exists for more than one instant, I may describe the duration of its existence as a line, or a linear interval.

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