4 ms·

For the sake of argument, what is the use of having time zones at all? I think it would be a lot easier to think about time internationally everyone lived in th

by Aunche 8y ago

For the sake of argument, what is the use of having time zones at all? I think it would be a lot easier to think about time internationally everyone lived in the same time zone.

ghaff 8y ago
See discussion elsewhere on this thread. Basically, most people care far about understanding roughly the "time of day" with respect to sleep/business/etc. than coordinating complicated international schedules. (For which UTC is sometimes convenient but even for frequent travelers is a small part of our typical year.)
- Aunche 8y ago
  Obviously, things would confusing to the point where it might not make sense to make the switch. However, after all the chaos, everyone's intuition would adjust to match their local longitude. It would be a little awkward to decide what "time" to start the day though, but it's not like midnight is the greatest time to start a day either.
duncan-donuts 8y ago
But how? Are you saying it would be the same time everywhere? So 12:00pm in London would be high noon and somewhere in the pacific (Sydney, maybe) it would be mid night? I don’t know if that would be any less confusing
david-cako 8y ago
I agree, but that's fundamentally a matter of how you think about time. The more globalized your daily affairs are and the more "scientifically" you think, the more you will be drawn to a unix-time style of thinking. "Humanistic" times are designed to unify everyone around particular rhythms that have the same "names" for when work starts (9), when work ends (5), the middle of the day (12/noon), etc, regardless of where they live (and at the cost of actually meaning the same time wherever you live). Those are even less meaningful if your schedule is based in weeks and months rather than days, though. The humanistic factor of time zones is most useful for in-person, social stuff. In every other case I would prefer to tell someone what GMT time I wanted to get on the phone with them.
- astrodust 8y ago
  There's a reason airlines work with "Zulu" time.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    There is but how airlines and armies operate doesn't have a lot to do with how regular people operate--even those who are frequently coordinating and traveling across time zones.
    - astrodust 8y ago
      Armies and airlines are filled with regular people, so it absolutely could work. The resistance is cultural, not because people can't deal. I'd love to be able to say we could schedule a call next Tuesday at 1900 and everyone knows exactly what that means without having to consult a look-up table. Imagine coordinating between teams spread across Arizona, which doesn't do DST, New York, which does, Brazil, which does but for the southern hemisphere, and Europe, which has its own thing going on. Getting people on the same page is not trivial, each week can be a whole different set of time-zone offsets. It'd be like switching from °F to °C which, once done, is not a problem, except of course if you have a stubbornly regressive administration like the US did in the 1980s.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        I'm sure they could deal and there is absolutely no reason for them to have to. Just because some techies feel that some other system is a more logical approach isn't justification for normal people to pay any attention whatsoever to their ramblings.
        astrodust 8y ago
        If we all lived in thatched houses and rode around in horses and had no interaction with anyone more than ten miles away I'd agree with you, but that's not the case any longer. Very few people are that isolated, and those that are probably don't care what time it is.
jtolmar 8y ago
Without timezones you'd have to know "when is noon where you are" (defining noon as the point where the sun is highest) or "what do most people start work there," either of which is the same amount of information to remember as timezone delta vs UTC. I don't think there's particularly any advantage either way, but everyone would have to re-learn their tricks for dealing with timezones and instead learn tricks for dealing with the lack of them.

by Aunche 8y ago

For the sake of argument, what is the use of having time zones at all? I think it would be a lot easier to think about time internationally everyone lived in the same time zone.

ghaff 8y ago

See discussion elsewhere on this thread. Basically, most people care far about understanding roughly the "time of day" with respect to sleep/business/etc. than coordinating complicated international schedules. (For which UTC is sometimes convenient but even for frequent travelers is a small part of our typical year.)

Aunche 8y ago
Obviously, things would confusing to the point where it might not make sense to make the switch. However, after all the chaos, everyone's intuition would adjust to match their local longitude. It would be a little awkward to decide what "time" to start the day though, but it's not like midnight is the greatest time to start a day either.

duncan-donuts 8y ago

But how? Are you saying it would be the same time everywhere? So 12:00pm in London would be high noon and somewhere in the pacific (Sydney, maybe) it would be mid night? I don’t know if that would be any less confusing

david-cako 8y ago

I agree, but that's fundamentally a matter of how you think about time. The more globalized your daily affairs are and the more "scientifically" you think, the more you will be drawn to a unix-time style of thinking. "Humanistic" times are designed to unify everyone around particular rhythms that have the same "names" for when work starts (9), when work ends (5), the middle of the day (12/noon), etc, regardless of where they live (and at the cost of actually meaning the same time wherever you live). Those are even less meaningful if your schedule is based in weeks and months rather than days, though. The humanistic factor of time zones is most useful for in-person, social stuff. In every other case I would prefer to tell someone what GMT time I wanted to get on the phone with them.

astrodust 8y ago
There's a reason airlines work with "Zulu" time.
- ghaff 8y ago
  There is but how airlines and armies operate doesn't have a lot to do with how regular people operate--even those who are frequently coordinating and traveling across time zones.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    Armies and airlines are filled with regular people, so it absolutely could work. The resistance is cultural, not because people can't deal. I'd love to be able to say we could schedule a call next Tuesday at 1900 and everyone knows exactly what that means without having to consult a look-up table. Imagine coordinating between teams spread across Arizona, which doesn't do DST, New York, which does, Brazil, which does but for the southern hemisphere, and Europe, which has its own thing going on. Getting people on the same page is not trivial, each week can be a whole different set of time-zone offsets. It'd be like switching from °F to °C which, once done, is not a problem, except of course if you have a stubbornly regressive administration like the US did in the 1980s.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      I'm sure they could deal and there is absolutely no reason for them to have to. Just because some techies feel that some other system is a more logical approach isn't justification for normal people to pay any attention whatsoever to their ramblings.
      - astrodust 8y ago
        If we all lived in thatched houses and rode around in horses and had no interaction with anyone more than ten miles away I'd agree with you, but that's not the case any longer. Very few people are that isolated, and those that are probably don't care what time it is.

jtolmar 8y ago

Without timezones you'd have to know "when is noon where you are" (defining noon as the point where the sun is highest) or "what do most people start work there," either of which is the same amount of information to remember as timezone delta vs UTC. I don't think there's particularly any advantage either way, but everyone would have to re-learn their tricks for dealing with timezones and instead learn tricks for dealing with the lack of them.