If you were "paused" in time, you wouldn't
know it. In fact, like Stephen said, whether
time was paused or slowed down or sped up,
you wouldn't be able to tell the difference
because you would be included in the effect.

When you pause a music CD, or a DVD movie
for that matter, it freezes in the spot where it
was when you hit the pause button. Then
when you unpause it, it picks up exactly where
it left off, as if nothing ever happened. From
your point of view (the observer and instigator
of these events) there is an observable period
of time during which the music or movie is
paused. But if you were able to live on a music
CD or DVD, it would be to you as if nothing
ever happened. Everything would be frozen--
your actions; your words; even your thoughts.
When it was unpaused, you'd pick up at the
very spot you left off without ever realizing
you'd stopped at all. That's how I imagine it
would be if time were ever paused. If it got
stuck on "pause," I don't think we'd ever know
the difference.

I also think that anybody in this "temporal
stream" (or whatever you want to call it) who
built a device with the ability to pause time
would be incredibly stupid. Such a device
would either never work at all, or it would only
be able to pause time once, never to unpause
it again, because it would necessarily come
under the influence of its own effect.
Assuming such a device could affect our time
stream and yet remain outside of its own
influence, whoever built it would have to
include a timer (how ironic) with an automatic
shut off, unless they could figure out a way for
the person operating the machine to remain
outside of its influence as well.

If time ever did get eternally paused, I doubt
it would be the result of the pausing device
breaking down after it was turned on. Rather,
it would probably happen as the result of the
hairbrained inventor attempting to create such
a device in the first place. How could
someone experiment with and test such a
device safely?

Gri"you've caught me interest"shny