---
title: "Temporal Orientation"
description: "The organizing idea of Thomas Moynihan's The History of Now, though the essay never uses the phrase."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/temporal-orientation"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/temporal-orientation"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Temporal Orientation

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/temporal-orientation), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

The organizing idea of [Thomas Moynihan](https://antikythera.wiki/people/thomas-moynihan)'s The History of Now, though the essay never uses the phrase. He calls humans "orienting creatures" and treats locating oneself in time, gauging the past behind and future ahead, as the neglected twin of Copernicus's location of Earth in space. His scrolling graph plots dated estimates of both, their ratio swinging with each evidential regime: scriptural chronology and Victorian thermodynamics put the present near the end, radium and cosmology near the beginning. The stakes are practical: time is the medium in which actions have consequences, so the expected span ahead changes behaviour, and a planet-altering species must reason at that scale. His Baby Noosphere lecture recasts this as a planet becoming "autobiographical" through sensors and models (Noösphere). Shallow Eternity vs. Deep Time is its precondition, eternity permitting no location; One Shot its consequence. Existential Technologies doubts that present morals survive such spans.

## Appears in

- [Planetary Sapience Symposium](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/planetarysapience) (2025-11-21)
- [The Long L](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/longl) (2025-11-21)
- [Existential Technologies](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/existentialtech) (2025-05-10)
- [Planetary Sapience & Planetary Stupidity: a Bildungsroman for the Baby Noosphere](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/babynoosphere) (2025-05-10)
- [The History of Now](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/historyofnow) (2025-05-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._