Except that it's not. Time is relative to each observer. Creating a consistent global view of time requires communication to achieve this consensus. Not just t

Except that it's not. Time is relative to each observer. Creating a consistent global view of time requires communication to achieve this consensus. Not just that, we know from FLP that we'll need to use failure detectors and timeouts to simulate a globally synchronous system. This approach (namely Paxos) has such a high performance cost that it's important to understand alternative perspectives that do not require a global clock (in any form). This was the entire point of Rich's talk: that we gain advantages from having a more nuanced model of time.