From time to process

About the Project

Rethinking data through continuity and ecosystems. Exploratory thoughts on the intersection of physics, philosophy, systems theory, and design.

Time is a construct, a conceptual tool humans use to organize tasks, experiences, and life itself. From our perspective, it remains indispensable, yet its true nature is still not fully understood. We often perceive time as something linear and divided into slices, but in reality, it might not exist as an independent entity at all. Rather, it could be a process, an emergent property deeply intertwined with the environment, planetary mass, gravity, and countless other factors we have yet to comprehend.

Wouldn’t it be more meaningful, then, to describe reality not in terms of “time” but through processes and the evolution of those processes within specific environmental conditions? For example, we age because we are made of particular matter, a cellular fabric whose lifespan evolved to maintain equilibrium with Earth’s environment. In space, however, that same framework might no longer apply, because the underlying conditions that define our “process of aging” would fundamentally change.

1. Time as a Construct vs. Process as Reality

• Human time (seconds, minutes, years) is a measurement system, a way to quantify and synchronize experience. It’s a tool, not a truth.
• Reality itself unfolds as processes of transformation, the continuous reconfiguration of energy and matter. Life, growth, decay, motion: these are not time-dependent; they’re state- and interaction-dependent.

So instead of saying “something changes over time,” you could say “something changes through interaction and transformation within its environment.” That’s the essence of process ontology, the philosophical idea that process, not object, is the fundamental unit of reality.

2. Implications for Understanding Data and Systems

If we embrace process-based thinking, data becomes not a record of static values but a trace of transformations:

• Each data point isn’t “a measurement in time,” but “a snapshot of an evolving state.”
• Instead of visualizing time series, we visualize state trajectories within environmental conditions (gravity, temperature, energy, etc.).
• Dashboards evolve into process models, showing how entities flow, adapt, and reorganize within constraints. This idea came from my ongoing learning into Salesforce Dashboards.

So rather than a “timeline,” we’d have something like:

A topology of transformations, showing how one pattern morphs into another depending on conditions.

3. Context: Time Depends on Environment

Change is not universal, it’s tied to context:

• On Earth, biological processes evolved under specific gravity, radiation, and chemical cycles.
• In space, for instance, those conditions shift, time dilation (Einstein’s relativity) and altered biological processes show that “aging” itself is context-dependent.
• So what we perceive as time is actually our local experience of process within Earth’s physical constants.

From that view, “time” is a shadow of interaction, not a fundamental axis.

4. Designing for Process, Not Time

If we apply this to systems design or data visualization:

• We stop thinking in x-axis = time, y-axis = value, and instead think in multi-dimensional states evolving through interdependence.
• Visuals could represent how systems self-organize, how feedback loops emerge, or how matter-energy reorganizes under constraints.
• The new goal: showing how conditions generate change, not just when change happens.

We move from time-based dashboards to process-based ecologies of information.

5. Philosophical Deep Point

If “time” is just our cognitive shorthand for “the order of changes we can perceive,” then perhaps what we should visualize, and model, is change itself, as a relational field of transformations, not a line of sequential moments.

That’s how you bridge physics, biology, and data science into one living continuum, an understanding that everything is processual, contextual, and co-evolving.

I started visualizing this idea through a conceptual diagram showing how time, process, environment, and transformation interrelate as a unified system of understanding with real data. Explore more by clicking on this link to see this visual experiment merging concepts of physics, philosophy, systems theory, and design.