I would not attriubte consciousness to clocks or to things that we assemble from inanimate matter. But I would grant primative, limited, a lesser degree of consciousness to atoms and molecules that make up inanimate matter. As I said earlier I would extend consciousness in lesser and lesser degrees from humans down through the chain of life and into in animate matter at the atomic level.
Where do you draw the fuzzy line that separates a conscious entity from one that is not?
Mechanical clocks work by making use of a set of machanical laws that apply to things of their scale. Specifically they work by having a steadily unwinding spring who's unwind speed is converted to three different hand speed. As it happens the mechanics involved are very local, such that only contact can trigger a change. But it is not the locality of events that makes these machines unaware. Rather it is the strict adherence to mechanical laws.
Atom and molecules also strictly adhere to mechanical laws, although their laws are very different. These laws happen to be non local and probabilistic in nature. Nevertheless they are well understood (mathematically), and can be used to make predictions about any such systems. Therefore although the rules are different, atoms and molecules still follow a kind of clockwork of their own.
I do not know exactly where to draw the line of what is conscious and what isn't, but saying atoms are conscious is diffidently too broad.
I do think it is a defintion problem. A photograph is different at the top than at the bottom, we say it "changes", but it really doesn't change in the same way an atom changes states or a snail grows. A movie is just a series of still photos athat are different art one end of the reel than the other. the movie doesn't really change as we watch it. Now as we watch it our expereince of what we see changes and those changes create before and after states for us that creates a sense of time.
...Time always measures, denotes, references a state berfore and a state after. I don't see it as a force or dimension or an influencer of any sort, just a notation that now is different from before.
A photograph changes with respect to the the y and x axis on it's plane, where as a snail changes with respect to time. Time and space aren't the same, but they are both just variables we perceive. Before and after is the same as left and right, and is even often represented that way on paper.
The difference that we perceive between time and space is that we can remember things in either direction in space, but only things that came before with time. Yet this isn't a statement about humans not time.
I call time a dimensions because for each three dimensional spacial position, a fourth time variable can be used to define an large, even infinite, amount of other places. We are agreed it is not a force or an influencer of any sort.
I would say that if we take the isotope example and isolate the isotope from everything else, then there is no time until we have a moment of change that provides us a reference point. If all creation consisted solely of this single isotope and nothing more, then there would be no time until it spontaneously became two. At that point, time begins because we have change. We have a before and an after.
Certainly there is little point and no ability to measure time when nothing changes. But that doesn't mean that it isn't there.
What happens to our sense of time in an isolation tank when we lose all our reference points to change?
You don't need to be in an isolation tank to lose track of time. The human perception of time is fickle. If we focus to hard on a complex task, time seems to go by quickly. If we instead focus on a simple task, time seem to go by slowly.
You are right that time cannot usefully be measured without references that everybody agrees on. But, the fact that such references exist is further evidence that time is external to consciousness.
I'm confused what point you were trying to make with the wiki quote.