Temporal pointers

 
In computer science, the idea of a spatial pointer as a symbolic index
into space (random access memory) greatly speeds up computation in many
cases (not all). 

Is there an equivalent concept in terms of a temporal pointer ?
A temporal pointer points to some "tangible" existing at some 
point in time whether the future or the past but we usually call
this an index into a recorded history, which in the case of the
future is not physically real, and in the past is not necessarily
useful in the present context. 

The idea of spatial-temporal pointers in the computer science
sense probably needs some further consideration.

Analogical histories