Digital time does not flow; it flicks. Like any binary, discrete

Host: The office was bathed in the pale glow of computer monitors, their light pulsating softly like artificial fireflies trapped in a glass cage. Outside, the city hummed — a chorus of distant engines, neon signs, and the muted footsteps of people walking nowhere in particular.

The clock on the wall showed 2:47 a.m., but time, in this room, felt irrelevant — as if the very seconds refused to move.

Jack sat hunched over a keyboard, the cold light sharpening the edges of his face, his grey eyes fixed on a scrolling stream of code. Jeeny stood by the window, watching the reflection of screens shimmer across the rain-soaked glass.

The hum of the machines filled the silence, rhythmic yet lifeless — like a mechanical heartbeat, steady but soulless.

Jeeny: “Douglas Rushkoff once said, ‘Digital time does not flow; it flicks.’ You ever feel that, Jack? Like everything’s just… jumping between moments? No in-between. No rhythm.”

Jack: without looking up “That’s the beauty of it. Precision. No wasted time. Every second exactly where it’s supposed to be.”

Host: A single cursor blinked on Jack’s screen — on, off, on, off — a tiny pulse of existence in a sea of logic.

Jeeny: “You call that beauty? It’s suffocating. Everything’s instantaneous, but nothing lives long enough to be felt.”

Jack: “That’s not suffocating, that’s efficient. The analog world was chaos — slow, unpredictable. Digital time gives us control.”

Jeeny: “Control?” She turns toward him. “You think you’re in control just because your clock doesn’t tick? Jack, we’ve lost the flow. Everything’s happening now, all at once — notifications, messages, updates — and yet, we’re never really here.”

Host: The rain began to fall harder, streaking across the window like data streaming past a lens. The sound was uneven — analog in its imperfection.

Jack: “The world adapts. We don’t need flow; we need function. The digital clock doesn’t care about your emotions — it just keeps perfect time. That’s progress.”

Jeeny: “Perfect? It’s sterile. You ever notice how the seconds on a digital clock just… flick? No in-between heartbeat. Just now—then gone. You blink, and time isn’t flowing, it’s disappearing.”

Jack: “That’s philosophy, Jeeny, not physics.”

Jeeny: “It’s experience, Jack. Physics can’t measure the feeling of missing a moment because it never arrived. When I write music, it’s not in beats per minute — it’s in breath. But digital time? It has no breath.”

Host: She stepped closer to the desk, her shadow stretching across the blue-white light. Jack’s fingers hovered above the keyboard, frozen mid-motion.

Jack: “Digital time is breath — it’s the pause between signals. You just don’t see it because you’re busy romanticizing chaos.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. Chaos is human. The flow of time is human. We’re meant to drift, not flick.”

Host: Her voice trembled slightly, caught between frustration and longing.

Jack: leans back, rubbing his temples “You want drifting? Drift long enough and you drown. The modern world needs decisions — on or off, one or zero. It’s the foundation of everything we’ve built.”

Jeeny: “And everything we’ve lost.”

Jack: “What have we lost?”

Jeeny: “Stillness. Continuity. The sense that a moment connects to another. Look around — we don’t wait anymore. We refresh.”

Host: The word hung in the air — refresh — like a blade reflecting the sterile light. Outside, a delivery drone passed by the window, its red light blinking in perfect binary rhythm.

Jack: “Maybe waiting was overrated. People used to waste lifetimes waiting — for letters, for calls, for chances that never came. Now, we have it all instantly.”

Jeeny: “But instant isn’t the same as real. You can’t touch something that vanishes before you even feel it.”

Jack: “You sound like you miss the past.”

Jeeny: “I miss duration. When a minute had weight. When silence had meaning.”

Host: Jack’s eyes softened, just slightly, as he looked up from the screen. The blue light reflected across Jeeny’s face, carving shadows beneath her eyes.

Jack: “Maybe we’re just evolving, Jeeny. Maybe digital time is teaching us to live in the now — no memory, no future, just… the pulse.”

Jeeny: “But Rushkoff said it himself — digital time isn’t flowing now. It’s flicking. That’s not being present. That’s being trapped.”

Host: The lights in the room flickered, as if responding to her words. For a moment, both of them were suspended — not moving, not breathing — only the faint hum of the machines filled the air.

Jack: “So what do you want, then? To go back to sundials and wax candles?”

Jeeny: smiles faintly “No. I want us to remember that time isn’t just numbers on a screen. It’s heartbeat, breath, silence, decay. We used to feel the passing of time — now we just measure it.”

Jack: “And that measurement gave us everything — medicine, space travel, connection. Without digital time, the world stops.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. Without flow, the soul stops.”

Host: The tension thickened, coiling between them like static electricity. The clock on the wall blinked from 2:59 to 3:00 — a flick, a cut, no motion in between.

Jeeny: “You see that? That jump. That’s what I mean. There’s no transition. No becoming. Just being — or not being.”

Jack: quietly “Maybe that’s the truth of it, Jeeny. Maybe time never really flows. Maybe it only ever is — and we invented the illusion of movement to feel less mortal.”

Jeeny: “So you’re saying all this — the ticking, the flicking, the clocks — it’s all just a way to forget we’re finite?”

Jack: “Exactly. The analog clock lies to you. It makes you think there’s motion between seconds. But there’s not. There’s just… the next.”

Host: The room felt smaller suddenly, as though the walls themselves were breathing in rhythm with the flicking monitors.

Jeeny: “That’s a cold way to live.”

Jack: “It’s an honest one.”

Host: She walked closer, until her reflection overlapped his on the glowing screen — her soft eyes meeting his steely gaze in the glass.

Jeeny: “Then maybe honesty isn’t enough. Maybe we need illusion — the space between seconds — to feel alive.”

Jack: “So you’d rather live in a lie?”

Jeeny: “No. I’d rather live in movement.”

Host: A long silence filled the room. Outside, the rain began to fade, leaving only the occasional drop echoing against the window.

Jack: after a pause “Maybe… that’s why I code. Every flick, every pulse — it’s like controlling time. Like I can make the world move again.”

Jeeny: “Then don’t just code, Jack. Compose. Let the binary breathe.”

Jack: smiles faintly “You make it sound like zeros and ones could sing.”

Jeeny: “Maybe they already do. You just forgot how to listen.”

Host: The monitors dimmed. The cursor still blinked, steady and unyielding — on, off, on, off — each flick a heartbeat of the digital age.

Jack turned off one screen, and suddenly the room was darker — softer — as if time had exhaled.

He looked at Jeeny, and for the first time that night, the world seemed to move again, not in flicks, but in flow.

Host: The rain stopped. The city lights blurred into slow ribbons of gold. The clock on the wall still flicked its sterile seconds, but Jack and Jeeny no longer looked at it.

They sat in the gentle hum of silence, between seconds — in that rare and sacred space Rushkoff called “poised.”

For the first time, the flick became a heartbeat.
And time — digital, fragile, human — began to breathe again.