I just saw, for the first time ever, a reference to “96 hours” when referring to elapsed time. That’s four days to you and me.

I *think* that this is an indication, albeit a small one, that what pundits have been calling the 24 hour news cycle is more real than ever before.

Data point #2: I was watching Olbermann tonight and he made a passing reference to the McCain Blackberry brouhaha as if it were ancient history, even though the briefing that kicked off the incident took place only yesterday morning (about 38 hours ago).

Data point #3: We’re barely over the collapse of one financial institution when we are eagerly anticipating news of the next. Lehman Brothers? Old news. Bear Sterns? Pleistiocene.

I might have more to blog on this later, but this addiction to recency is an interesting phenomenon.

p.s. I probably also noticed this because I’ve been reading a lot of Charles Stross and Vernor Vinge, and they both use their own alternate time systems in their novels – a decimal-based system – kiloseconds, megaseconds, gigaseconds, etc.