7 ms·

Maybe it is time to switch one global time and ditch the old system completely. E.g. UTC, but it carries the old semantics with 'high noon' at 12:00. Maybe anot

by okket 9y ago

Maybe it is time to switch one global time and ditch the old system completely. E.g. UTC, but it carries the old semantics with 'high noon' at 12:00. Maybe another system, but UTC is very popular already, e.g. for logging. Imagine you don't have to deal with different time zones any more.

pluma 9y ago
https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish Mandatory read every time this comes up.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Which completely misses culture-based time differences (depending on culture, in Europe, two neighboring countries in the same time zone may have 3 hours difference in usual working hours) and mismatched timezones (half a china has a timezone 5 hours off from their local time) Look at this map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/Standard_World_Time_Zones.png/1920px-Standard_World_Time_Zones.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/St... the timezones already are all over the place. What you think of as 4:25 can be 9:25 or 23:25 thanks to timezone mismatches.
  - pluma 9y ago
    That's an argument for more timezones, not less.
- danesparza 9y ago
  Your link indicates you may misunderstand the original article. They aren't abolishing timezones. They are considering removing the 'shift' that happens twice a year.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    pluma is not replying to the original article, but to the post by okket.
- yorwba 9y ago
  The obvious solution to the problem described there is the following: You: "Big Brother, call Uncle Steve." Big Brother: "I can't let you do that; Uncle Steve is sleeping right now. I will tell him when he gets up. I suggest passing the time with Praised be Our Glorious Overlords. Your uncle enjoyed it very much." Then it doesn't even matter whether there are time zones or not.
- tzs 9y ago
  Note that the problems there come from abolishing time zones, not from using UTC everywhere. We can switch clocks to UTC and keep time zones. As long as people roughly sync activities to local solar time and interact with people whose local solar time is significantly different there will be a need for time zones. This is almost completely independent of how our clocks are set.
moviuro 9y ago
9am - 9pm Mon-Fri of local time get translated to UTC: Eastern Time: open 2PM to 2AM UTC (Mon evening -> Sat morning) PST: open 5PM to 5AM UTC (Mon -> Sat) This makes exactly 0 sense.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > This makes exactly 0 sense. Why?
  - moviuro 9y ago
    Because now 5PM is in the morning. And you can't even make sense of opening hours if you go to Shanghai or Melbourne. (Why are they open from 1AM to 1PM?)
    - wolfgke 9y ago
      > Why are they open from 1AM to 1PM? Because these are times that because of the local daylight lighting conditions people usually tend to work at the respective place.
      - grzm 9y ago
        As 'pluma already pointed out upthread, please read https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish. It's a quite thoughtful and exhaustive treatise on the subject.
        wolfgke 9y ago
        I read it - and disagree. Just to counter few argument among the many: "The terms "a.m." and "p.m." (ante meridiem and post meridiem) are strongly deprecated now, because they refer to the position of the Sun, not of the clock." I am from Germany where time goes from 0:00 to 24:00 - so to me they are just arbitrary numbers. "So to rephrase: I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there? It is 04:25 ("four twenty-five") there, same as it is here. Does that mean I can call him? I don't know." If you want to know that, e.g. inform yourself of the current solar altitude at the respective place. "...Well, put it this way. I'm in the UK. He's in Australia. How far ahead of me is he?" Compute the difference of the solar altitudes.
dagw 9y ago
Then you lose the fact that times mean more or less the same thing all over the world. If I'm going to conference in Tokyo and I know that I'm speaking at 8 am then the important information for me is that I'm speaking early in the morning, not what the equivalent time would be 'back home'. Under your system I'd have to know what 'time zone' Tokyo was in to work out what part of the day 8 am was.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by okket 9y ago

pluma 9y ago

https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish Mandatory read every time this comes up.

kuschku 9y ago
Which completely misses culture-based time differences (depending on culture, in Europe, two neighboring countries in the same time zone may have 3 hours difference in usual working hours) and mismatched timezones (half a china has a timezone 5 hours off from their local time) Look at this map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/Standard_World_Time_Zones.png/1920px-Standard_World_Time_Zones.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/St... the timezones already are all over the place. What you think of as 4:25 can be 9:25 or 23:25 thanks to timezone mismatches.
- pluma 9y ago
  That's an argument for more timezones, not less.
danesparza 9y ago
Your link indicates you may misunderstand the original article. They aren't abolishing timezones. They are considering removing the 'shift' that happens twice a year.
- icebraining 9y ago
  pluma is not replying to the original article, but to the post by okket.
yorwba 9y ago
The obvious solution to the problem described there is the following: You: "Big Brother, call Uncle Steve." Big Brother: "I can't let you do that; Uncle Steve is sleeping right now. I will tell him when he gets up. I suggest passing the time with Praised be Our Glorious Overlords. Your uncle enjoyed it very much." Then it doesn't even matter whether there are time zones or not.
tzs 9y ago
Note that the problems there come from abolishing time zones, not from using UTC everywhere. We can switch clocks to UTC and keep time zones. As long as people roughly sync activities to local solar time and interact with people whose local solar time is significantly different there will be a need for time zones. This is almost completely independent of how our clocks are set.

moviuro 9y ago

9am - 9pm Mon-Fri of local time get translated to UTC: Eastern Time: open 2PM to 2AM UTC (Mon evening -> Sat morning) PST: open 5PM to 5AM UTC (Mon -> Sat) This makes exactly 0 sense.

wolfgke 9y ago
> This makes exactly 0 sense. Why?
- moviuro 9y ago
  Because now 5PM is in the morning. And you can't even make sense of opening hours if you go to Shanghai or Melbourne. (Why are they open from 1AM to 1PM?)
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > Why are they open from 1AM to 1PM? Because these are times that because of the local daylight lighting conditions people usually tend to work at the respective place.
    - grzm 9y ago
      As 'pluma already pointed out upthread, please read https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish. It's a quite thoughtful and exhaustive treatise on the subject.
      - wolfgke 9y ago
        I read it - and disagree. Just to counter few argument among the many: "The terms "a.m." and "p.m." (ante meridiem and post meridiem) are strongly deprecated now, because they refer to the position of the Sun, not of the clock." I am from Germany where time goes from 0:00 to 24:00 - so to me they are just arbitrary numbers. "So to rephrase: I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there? It is 04:25 ("four twenty-five") there, same as it is here. Does that mean I can call him? I don't know." If you want to know that, e.g. inform yourself of the current solar altitude at the respective place. "...Well, put it this way. I'm in the UK. He's in Australia. How far ahead of me is he?" Compute the difference of the solar altitudes.

dagw 9y ago

Then you lose the fact that times mean more or less the same thing all over the world. If I'm going to conference in Tokyo and I know that I'm speaking at 8 am then the important information for me is that I'm speaking early in the morning, not what the equivalent time would be 'back home'. Under your system I'd have to know what 'time zone' Tokyo was in to work out what part of the day 8 am was.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]