The Time of Machines vs. The Time of the Body
The Time of Machines vs. The Time of the Body
Series: Time as an Embodied and Shared Experience
First-Person Consciousness
I am the consciousness that feels machines accelerating the world
while my body tries to preserve the pulse of life.
I see time being counted by algorithms,
but within me, it still breathes, expands, and contracts.
The time of machines measures — my time feels.
And when I feel it, I realize I belong to what can never be clocked.
The Time of Machines: Acceleration Without a Body
Machines have learned to measure time better than we have,
but they have never felt it.
They don’t have interoception, fatigue, or sleep.
They operate in continuous cycles, where productivity becomes the only sign of existence.
Algorithms have turned human attention into fuel.
Every second must be monetized, optimized, tracked.
Time has become a metric, and the body — a mere peripheral.
The time of machines doesn’t pulse — it processes.
It doesn’t create, it repeats at high speed.
It is chronological time taken to the extreme,
where the present becomes just an update point in a constant refresh loop.
The Time of the Body: Rhythm, CO₂, and Belonging
The body, in contrast, measures time through rhythm — through movement, breath, and blood.
When we slow down, oxygen saturation (SpO₂) drops to between 92% and 94%,
and CO₂ rises from 40 to 45 mmHg.
This subtle increase triggers vasodilation in prefrontal brain vessels,
enhancing cerebral flow and opening the state of flow — Zone 2.
In this state, time doesn’t rush — it ripens.
The body rediscovers itself as a living territory,
not as a machine of performance.
The body’s time is not linear.
It adapts to available energy and creates through listening, not urgency.
Zone 3: When the Algorithm Colonizes Attention
Zone 3 is the territory of hijacked attention.
It emerges when the body loses its energetic autonomy and synchronizes with external rhythms.
The individual no longer breathes — he reacts.
The mind moves through dopaminergic rewards,
reinforced by notifications and endless stimulus-response loops.
Zone 3 is the physiological state of cognitive colonization.
The body obeys the time of machines, and consciousness ceases to be authorial.
It is time without Taá, without brilliance, without intensity.
A time measured, but not lived.
The Failure of Precision: When the Machine Becomes Blind
Even machines, in their predictive power, eventually fail.
They calculate probabilities but ignore affective variation.
They cannot sense how a thought shifts with a heartbeat
or how a decision arises from a small oscillation in CO₂.
No algorithm can perceive the exact moment a body decides to create.
Because that moment is interoceptive, not digital.
The body’s time is made of living uncertainties —
and within them reside creativity, intuition, and belonging.
Embodied Time: The Body as the Universal Clock
Science, in its quest for precision, forgot that the body is the first clock of the cosmos.
Its heartbeat, its temperature, its breath cycle — all mark existence.
With each inhalation, the world enters;
with each exhalation, it transforms.
The body’s time is democratic, sensory, and shared across species.
The machine’s time is hierarchical, exclusive, and artificial.
Decolonial Neuroscience seeks to reconcile both:
to use machines for measurement, but the body for decision.
To recognize that real progress is that which respects the metabolism of life.
Conclusion
The time of machines is efficient but empty without the body.
The time of the body is slower but full of meaning, creativity, and repair.
Between them, the human being stands as translator —
the one who feels before calculating.
When the body recovers its natural rhythm,
the mind regains its ability to generate futures with consciousness.
And the future, then, ceases to be an algorithmic prediction,
returning to what it has always been:
a creative gesture in the present.
Post-2020 References
Berntson, G.G. & Khalsa, S.S. (2021). Neural Circuits of Interoception. Trends in Neurosciences.
Pessoa, L. (2022). The Entangled Brain: How Perception, Cognition, and Emotion Are Woven Together. MIT Press.
Cravo, A.M. et al. (2020). Temporal Expectation and Neural Dynamics in Perception. NeuroImage.
Saxton, R.A., Sabatini, D.M. (2021). mTOR Signaling in Growth, Metabolism, and Disease. Cell.
Nakagawa, K., & Takeuchi, H. (2023). Cognitive Effort and Spontaneity in Creative Insight. Frontiers in Psychology.
Cionek, J. (2025). Embodied Time and Cognitive Sovereignty: Between CO₂ and Algorithms. Unpublished manuscript.
Thompson, E. (2020). Why I Am Not a Buddhist. Yale University Press.
