The document discusses time and ordering in distributed streaming systems through three lenses: uniformity of time, arrow of time, and perception of time. It explains that in distributed systems, clocks are not perfectly synchronized and time is not uniform. It also discusses how the direction of time can be blurred by out of order event processing. Finally, it explores how perceptions of time and ordering depend on an observer's frame of reference, and there is no single global ordering of events in a distributed system.