Stoplights are a Go.

I was on StumbleUpon (one of my favorite websites) and came across this concept for a new stoplight. I find the idea intriguing and think it would help with traffic quite a bit, because you'll know exactly how much time is being spent while at a stoplight.



The concept is simple as you can see. The hourglass shows how much 'sand' is left before the color changes. In the case of a yellow light it shows you how much time is left before you are either able to go or how much time you have to stop.

However, this thought on time swiftly followed the traffic lights leaving me wondering if traffic lights that show how time runs out would be a good idea after all?



I can't imagine life without time. I can't imagine not having an i-phone or a clock or a computer somewhere near by to tell me what time of day it is. What did our ancestors do before they began marking the passing of time with sundials? Did they worry over all the things we worry over now? Did they imagine their time, their lives, slipping like sand through a vast hourglass, slowly disappearing?

We have a tendency to see time as a finite thing. A thing that ends. And it does, in a sense. For all of us the clock will eventually cease to tick, the sand cease to fall, the sun cease to set. We end, therefore, for us, time ends.

Time however is immeasurable. It is like taffy, pulled out into endless ropes of forever. It pulls further and further. We do not have the capability to even begin to comprehend the infinite amount of time there is stretching out before us. Yawning out like a black chasm, an endlessly long tunnel.

I think that makes it scary. Time will go on. Life will go on. We won't. We will end. Everything ends. But even after everything is gone, there will still be time. In the abyss of everything there will always be time.