Saying that "nowadays" is typically used to refer to an exact time is very dubious. "Nowadays" is usually fairly vague and broad.

For example, in the saying "Kids nowadays . . ." people might mean a generation or two of young folks, depending on just what behavior they're talking about, just how old the person who said "Kids nowadays" is, etc. A 50-something guy saying "Kids nowadays do not know how to dress" might have in mind people over a 30-something year time span.

On the one side, the statement “time today” may have a sole significance. From the other side, it implies another sentence #2, indicating the exact time of the occurrence of the first one. For instance, “sentence #1 took place on the 12 March,
at 1:45 p.m.”. Therefore, there has been the operation of objectification of sentence #1. The particular meaning of sentence #1 has been transformed and reduced to an objective and common sense.

Has it been possible to grasp the meaning of the present time? — Number2018

Tell you later.

In the mean time, consider that you already grasp that meaning, as is evidenced by your ability to make use of it in your everyday world,

Why look for some words to set out what you already know?

That is, forget the meaning and look at what you, and we, can do.

Apocryphal has it that there are a group of First Nations folk in Australia who don't see time as a line, but as walking backwards.

You can see where you have been, but not where you are going.

I kinda like that.

Why look for some words to set out what you already know? — Banno

I haven't known yet.

And yet you replied, later.

Wouldn't this be a case where any meaning would necessarily be deferred, delayed, and distributed?(Derrida)

this — Monitor

What?

Apocryphal has it that there are a group of First Nations folk in Australia who don't see time as a line, but as walking backwards.

You can see where you have been, but not where you are going.

I kinda like that. — Banno

That's right, precious few of us will ever actually turn and face the future, because it's way too scary. So we just keep looking at the past, attempting to employ some principles of logic to determine what's coming at us from the future. What most of us don't realize though, is that we're naturally inclined through evolutionary forces, to face the future. So we're actually facing the future, and going forward. That we seem to be facing the past and walking backward into the future, is really a matter of walking forward, but facing a giant mirror showing only what's behind. So we're really going forward, while looking at a giant rear view mirror. It's quite complicated I know, but we won't take our eyes off that rear view mirror to actually face the future, because the future itself is way too scary.

Clairvoyance?

as it been possible to grasp the meaning of the present time? — Number2018

Actually concepts about time have regressed over the last two thousand years. The ancient greeks had two different words for time: chronos and eon. Chronos implies ordered and counted time, as in clocks. eon refers to more generalized concepts of timespans that do not have well defined edges, such as epochs. Due to the spread of science over the last few centuries, the importance of the second concept has largely been lost.

If you are interested in ideas of subjective time, the landmark scientific study is by Benjamin Lee Whorf, who observed that the Hopi indians have three verb tenses: one for the present, one for recent events for which sense data still exists, and one for everything else, including hopes, promises, the far past, the future, and emotions. As a consequence, Hopi indians have trouble understanding clocks, which was a substantiation for his theory that language precedes thought, but that notion was later rejected by american scientists as being racist when it was applied to the school system.

Apocryphal has it that there are a group of First Nations folk in Australia who don't see time as a line, but as walking backwards.

You can see where you have been, but not where you are going.

I kinda like that. — Banno

:clap: :up: interesting

If clarity and precision are virtues then science must be God. That said, even science lacks a theoretical definition of time. Time in science, if I remember correctly, is given an operational definition as "the quantity measured by a clock".

So, methinks the problem is more fundamental than just a difficulty with the concept of now.

That scientists are satisfied with their operational definition of time says a lot; that it is adequate for all purposes as of now.

something has to go undefied. Why not time? What is it you don’t know about time?

something has to go undefied. Why not time? What is it you don’t know about time? — Banno

Well, considering science is the archetype of clarity, precision, logical rigor, it's odd that they don't have a theoretical definition of time. I surmise that science simply doesn't need one at the moment. I'm fine with that; it's a decision that must have been arrived at through careful deliberation.

However, I'm curious as to why time is not so easy to define. Perhaps the right word is ''impossible''.

we're actually facing the future, and going forward. That we seem to be facing the past and walking backward into the future, is really a matter of walking forward, but facing a giant mirror showing only what's behind. So we're really going forward, while looking at a giant rear view mirror. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with you. Since we cannot predict and foresee our future, we are inclined to eliminate it, to substitute it for familiar images and identifications from the past. As a result,the cyclic model of time has been reproduced over and over again.

the Hopi indians have three verb tenses: one for the present, one for recent events for which sense data still exists, and one for everything else, including hopes, promises, the far past, the future, and emotions. As a consequence, Hopi indians have trouble understanding clocks — ernestm

Probably, for the Hopi Indians experience of time and its language forms had been inseparable
from the rhythms of their social and natural environments. In contrast, the clocks and calendars had imperialistically and systematically suppressed anterior expressions of time.

I'm curious as to why time is not so easy to define. Perhaps the right word is ''impossible''. — TheMadFool

When one tries to define time, one applies various logical and language recourses.
Therefore, the fundamental features of time, related to change and becoming,
have escaped the definition. It has been possible to assume that any scientific or/and objectified approach to time reduces it to spatial representations and forms.

Do people say "time nowadays"? I googled the phrase, and although there are many hits, the sentence context is usually something like "...waste of time nowadays..." or "...time. Nowadays..."

Thank you for your point. What about “time today”?

When one says “present time,” as an occurrence, the sentence is a “now,” it is presenting time which is “right now.” This presenting of time has inevitably
become the presented, mediated, and objectified time.

Google Ngram reports the frequency of words and phrases in print. Here is the Ngram for "time nowadays". Its heyday (another time-expression was in the first half of the 20th century, like... 1920 and 1940. Perhaps those were times when people felt that the familiar was dislocated?

I agree with you. Since we cannot predict and foresee our future, we are inclined to eliminate it, to substitute it for familiar images and identifications from the past. As a result,the cyclic model of time has been reproduced over and over again. — Number2018

What I'm thinking of, is more of a linear model of time. The problem being that the model really only takes into account the past. All of our experience is in the past. We proceed with inductive reasoning and draw conclusions about the past. The problem being that instead of recognizing that the past begins at the present, and that the future is fundamentally different from the past, we draw a line of temporal continuity in the model, through the present into the future. So we end up with a linear model of time which extends from past through future, with the present being a point somewhere on this line, without accounting for the fact that the future is substantially different from the past, and such a continuity is a misrepresentation.

The past is pretty clear -- from now back to eternity, and so is the future--from here forward to eternity. What is unclear is the present -- at least to some people. I don't know how long your present is. Some would say it's measurable in nanoseconds. Practically (every day usage) "now", "the present", "currently", and so on can be fairly long. How long is the "political present"? Some would say since Donald Trump was elected. I'd stretch the political present back to 1968 and the Democratic Nominating Convention in Chicago. It wasn't so much that Humphrey lost as it was that Richard Nixon won. Humphrey was a long-time honest progressive and Nixon was a long-time shifty bastard. Shifty but competent. It's been downhill ever since. The 1960s marked the end of the international progressive wing of the Republican Party, and they haven't been replenished. The Democrats started losing their edge in the 60s, such that a Democrat (Clinton) could "end welfare as we know it" in the 1990s. It wasn't that welfare was so great, it's just that ending welfare as we knew it was pretty bad for a lot of people.

So, the political present is about 50 years long.

I'd call the "technical present" about 120 years long, minimum. How could that be? 120 years ago weren't we still using horses as the main source of traction and transportation, outside of the railroad? We were, true. But look at it this way: Lincoln used electronic communication (the telegraph) to manage his generals during the Civil War. That was a huge innovation -- the top guy jerking the chain of a general at a distance of 1000 miles in real time. That's 1861-1865. Photographs of Civil War battlefields shocked civilians in the north. Sort of like Vietnam a century later. By 1900 the telegraph was ubiquitous and telephones were becoming more common. Radio communication had commenced (not broadcasts quite yet). Recorded sound was available--not great, but compared to nothing it was amazing. Moving pictures had arrived. The auto had made its appearance.

Röntgen won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for his discovery of x-rays. Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie, and Pierre Curie won the Nobel prize for their discoveries in radioactivity in 1903. Einstein published his paper about relativity in 1915. And so on...

What is it you don’t know about time? — Banno

Presentism versus eternalism, which is correct and why?

We have words for all those things too, they just contain more letters.

What I'm thinking of, is more of a linear model of time — Metaphysician Undercover

As you wrote in your previous post:

So we're actually facing the future, and going forward. That we seem to be facing the past and walking backward into the future, is really a matter of walking forward, but facing a giant mirror showing only what's behind. — Metaphysician Undercover

Doesn’t it mean that we project our past into our future?
And, by doing so, subjectively, we reproduce our past and a cyclic model of time.
I think that you write about two different experiences of time: "real"(objective), and "subjective", and sometimes you do not differentiate between them.
I mean "subjective".

we end up with a linear model of time which extends from past through future, with the present being a point somewhere on this line, without accounting for the fact that the future is substantially different from the past, and such a continuity is a misrepresentation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with you, a linear model does not reflect our subjective experience of time.

The problem being that instead of recognizing that the past begins at the present, and that the future is fundamentally different from the past, we draw a line — Metaphysician Undercover

There are non-linear contemporary philosophies of time

Presentism versus eternalism, which is correct and why? — Hanover

Orthogonal vs. perspective, which is correct and why?

The past is pretty clear -- from now back to eternity, and so is the future--from here forward to eternity. — Bitter Crank

I do not know what eternity is. Could you explain it to me?

What is unclear is the present -- at least to some people. I don't know how long your present is. Some would say it's measurable in nanoseconds. Practically (every day usage) "now", "the present", "currently", and so on can be fairly long — Bitter Crank

I agree with you. For me, my present is a whole, conscious experience, it can last from a few seconds to a few hours. I think, that my life is given to me through my "presents".

How long is the "political present"? — Bitter Crank

There are too many answers.

And, by doing so, subjectively, we reproduce our past and a cyclic model of time. — Number2018

I don't see where the cyclical aspect comes from.

There are non-linear contemporary philosophies of time — Number2018

Yes, cyclical perhaps, but I don't see how that would be grounded. Any others?