4 ms·

A radical plan to destroy time zones

8 points by jakobdabo 11y ago

nikolay 11y ago
It's not gonna happen. You can't kill the daily convenience for the edge case of travel.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  Or the convenience of programmers.
  - turbohz 11y ago
    Or remote communication.
    - hinkley 11y ago
      Or trading on the stock market.
      - nikolay 11y ago
        You guys have a limited imagination! In the near future, timezone conversion will be frictionless. Thanks to AI voice communication can automatically convert time and text-based communication can do this earlier. Don't forget Skype can now translate voice in real time!
        turbohz 11y ago
        Why would we have to wait for the future to solve an issue we invented ourselves? Calendars, timezones, unit measures, currencies are self inflicted pain.
        nikolay 11y ago
        Because we need to know approximately the time left till dawn or dusk without having to calculate it every time in every timezone we currently are in. In fact, the date is a problem we invented - time of the day is natural, the location of the sun in the day.
        turbohz 11y ago
        Good point! But I think you underestimate how adaptable humans are. You would get used to midday being 18:00h very fast.
orestes910 11y ago
An appropriately academic look at the problem. Ignore all the reasons its done the way it is and scream "We should this because physics!"
- rspeer 11y ago
  While fixing everything about times and dates seems great in the abstract, these guys sound approximately like the French revolutionaries proposing their new calendar. And at least the French came up with new names when they were doing things differently. The headaches that come from relabeling the calendar -- to one that looks confusingly the same, except that "January 1" has a different meaning than it used to -- would probably cause a century of bugs and confusion.
DanAndersen 11y ago
Obligatory links to relevant posts: "You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform" http://qntm.org/calendar http://qntm.org/calendar "So you want to abolish time zones" http://qntm.org/abolish http://qntm.org/abolish
noir_lord 11y ago
In the Vernor vinge novels they use unixtime and units of kilo and mega seconds as handling time issues across space would be nightmarishly complex. Its surprising how quickly you get a grasp of the units, made me realise all our time stuff is just arbitrary convention. See also Swatch internet time :)
- DanBC 11y ago
  I'm surprised that something like Swatch internet time hasn't made a comeback with the popularity of Minecraft. Online gaming is a good use for it. MS should buy it off Swatch and put it in minecraft.

8 points by jakobdabo 11y ago

nikolay 11y ago

It's not gonna happen. You can't kill the daily convenience for the edge case of travel.

cableshaft 11y ago
Or the convenience of programmers.
- turbohz 11y ago
  Or remote communication.
  - hinkley 11y ago
    Or trading on the stock market.
    - nikolay 11y ago
      You guys have a limited imagination! In the near future, timezone conversion will be frictionless. Thanks to AI voice communication can automatically convert time and text-based communication can do this earlier. Don't forget Skype can now translate voice in real time!
      - turbohz 11y ago
        Why would we have to wait for the future to solve an issue we invented ourselves? Calendars, timezones, unit measures, currencies are self inflicted pain.
        nikolay 11y ago
        Because we need to know approximately the time left till dawn or dusk without having to calculate it every time in every timezone we currently are in. In fact, the date is a problem we invented - time of the day is natural, the location of the sun in the day.
        turbohz 11y ago
        Good point! But I think you underestimate how adaptable humans are. You would get used to midday being 18:00h very fast.

orestes910 11y ago

An appropriately academic look at the problem. Ignore all the reasons its done the way it is and scream "We should this because physics!"

rspeer 11y ago
While fixing everything about times and dates seems great in the abstract, these guys sound approximately like the French revolutionaries proposing their new calendar. And at least the French came up with new names when they were doing things differently. The headaches that come from relabeling the calendar -- to one that looks confusingly the same, except that "January 1" has a different meaning than it used to -- would probably cause a century of bugs and confusion.

DanAndersen 11y ago

Obligatory links to relevant posts: "You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform" http://qntm.org/calendar http://qntm.org/calendar "So you want to abolish time zones" http://qntm.org/abolish http://qntm.org/abolish

noir_lord 11y ago

In the Vernor vinge novels they use unixtime and units of kilo and mega seconds as handling time issues across space would be nightmarishly complex. Its surprising how quickly you get a grasp of the units, made me realise all our time stuff is just arbitrary convention. See also Swatch internet time :)

DanBC 11y ago
I'm surprised that something like Swatch internet time hasn't made a comeback with the popularity of Minecraft. Online gaming is a good use for it. MS should buy it off Swatch and put it in minecraft.