When analysing a circuit we normally consider a wire to have the same voltage along its entire length. (There are two problems with this: voltage changes only propagate at c, and the wire has a resistance. Normally these are both negligible.) Thus we can view wires as taking a voltage and spreading it out along a line in space.
On the other hand, memory locations take a voltage and spread it out through time. So they are in some sense a wire pointing in the time direction.
Sadly, the analogy doesn’t quite hold up. Wires have one spatial dimension but also have a temporal dimension (i.e. wires exist for more than an instant). So if you rotated a wire so that its spatial dimension pointed along the temporal dimension, its temporal dimension would rotate down into one of the spatial dimensions. It would still look like a wire! A memory location has no spatial extent: they’re a very small bit of metal (you could make one in the shape of a wire but people don’t). Thus they have a temporal extent but no spatial extent. So if you rotated one you could get something that had a spatial extent but no temporal extent. This would look like a piece of wire that appeared for an instant and then disappeared again.
Amazing! So a stricter analogy might be a memory location and a lightning bolt—the memory location occupies only a tiny amount of space, and the static discharge of lightning takes only a tiny amount of time.
When analysing a circuit we normally consider a wire to have the same voltage along its entire length. (There are two problems with this: voltage changes only propagate at c, and the wire has a resistance. Normally these are both negligible.) Thus we can view wires as taking a voltage and spreading it out along a line in space.
On the other hand, memory locations take a voltage and spread it out through time. So they are in some sense a wire pointing in the time direction.
Sadly, the analogy doesn’t quite hold up. Wires have one spatial dimension but also have a temporal dimension (i.e. wires exist for more than an instant). So if you rotated a wire so that its spatial dimension pointed along the temporal dimension, its temporal dimension would rotate down into one of the spatial dimensions. It would still look like a wire! A memory location has no spatial extent: they’re a very small bit of metal (you could make one in the shape of a wire but people don’t). Thus they have a temporal extent but no spatial extent. So if you rotated one you could get something that had a spatial extent but no temporal extent. This would look like a piece of wire that appeared for an instant and then disappeared again.
Amazing! So a stricter analogy might be a memory location and a lightning bolt—the memory location occupies only a tiny amount of space, and the static discharge of lightning takes only a tiny amount of time.