In the late 20th Century V.O.E. (Very Old Era), before the Ascendancy of the Bush/Palin
Luddite Multivirate, human technopeds had developed machine methods of freezing temporal sequences
onto magnetostrictive and optically nudged substrates, so that these captured events could be reproduced,
viewed and reviewed at any subsequent moment in what the ancients quaintly called "time" - a primitive form
of temporo-spatial manipulation that consumed the energy of the entire species for millenia.

During the reign of the Luddite Founders and their rabid followers,
all machine-based technoped activity came to be outlawed, including the development
of co-sentient organic and biomineral life forms. Mankind regressed to its
earliest, most primitive state, as religion-based superstition and hatreds inflamed organic
passions and spurred planetwide conflict and holocausts. Aeons passed,
and mankind eventually evolved under the Seldon Guidance Principles (first brought to light
by none other than Asimov)  to the point that eventually the space-time bubble was
discovered to be subject to coherent thought manipulation from the Central Collective
mindbrain, and the flow of pure uncorrelated time was willed to cease altogether.

Thanks to the wisdom of the Central Collective, all mankind and its
co-dependent sentient life forms learned to contribute their Aura
to the Central Effort, and all manifestations of the physical universe -
past, present, and "future" -came to be experienced at will, simultaneously,
by any individual being.

The dawn of the 29th century V.O.E. saw the beginning of the end of
uncorrelated, irreversible time flow altogether, and the consequences for
our evolutionary growth to the present bubble are still efflorescing in
unpredictable and marvelous ways.

(anonymous entry in the Encyclopaedia Galactica, 6999 V.O.E.)