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The only people I know that want to get rid of timezones are technical people, often programmers. Which is crazy to me, because we literally invented computers

by ipqk 8y ago

The only people I know that want to get rid of timezones are technical people, often programmers. Which is crazy to me, because we literally invented computers to solve the coordination issue with timezones. Getting rid of timezones just offloads the difficulty back to our brains.

ergothus 8y ago
1 - I thought the primary initial use of modern computers was artillery calculations, not timezones? I don't recall Babbage's goal, but I doubt it was timezones. 2 - While technical people are often the most vocal, anyone that deals with spanning timezones tends to hate them. Aviation, shipping, scheduling, offices that span timezones - all groups that aren't getting smaller. 3 - "Getting rid of timezones just offloads the difficulty back to our brains." How does getting rid of timezones get rid of computers?
- function_seven 8y ago
  > anyone that deals with spanning timezones tends to hate them. Aviation, shipping, scheduling, offices that span timezones - all groups that aren't getting smaller. I think you're confusing the map with the territory. What these people hate is that their job requires coordinating resources in far-flung parts of the world, all with different waking and operating hours. If time-zones go away, they still have to deal with the fact that a plane isn't going to depart Shanghai until an hour after sunrise, or that the post office won't deliver the packages until just before solar noon. But now they have to keep track of the offsets in each city manually instead of applying the agreed-upon TZ offset. Time-zones acknowledge a fact about our world. Humans living in different places wake up, work, play, and sleep at different times. These times are (loosely) encoded in the offset. Get rid of that offset, put everyone on UTC, and you lose some information in the process.
- ipqk 8y ago
  Sorry, I poorly worded that (and even used the word literally. Sigh). My bad. I meant that we invented computers to do mathematical calculations, of which timezones are a great example. Getting rid of the timezones doesn't mean we get rid of computers. It just means all benefits we get from using computers for timezones are now lost. and we have to do mental calculations to figure out what 4:30am means at any given location.

by ipqk 8y ago

ergothus 8y ago

1 - I thought the primary initial use of modern computers was artillery calculations, not timezones? I don't recall Babbage's goal, but I doubt it was timezones. 2 - While technical people are often the most vocal, anyone that deals with spanning timezones tends to hate them. Aviation, shipping, scheduling, offices that span timezones - all groups that aren't getting smaller. 3 - "Getting rid of timezones just offloads the difficulty back to our brains." How does getting rid of timezones get rid of computers?

function_seven 8y ago
> anyone that deals with spanning timezones tends to hate them. Aviation, shipping, scheduling, offices that span timezones - all groups that aren't getting smaller. I think you're confusing the map with the territory. What these people hate is that their job requires coordinating resources in far-flung parts of the world, all with different waking and operating hours. If time-zones go away, they still have to deal with the fact that a plane isn't going to depart Shanghai until an hour after sunrise, or that the post office won't deliver the packages until just before solar noon. But now they have to keep track of the offsets in each city manually instead of applying the agreed-upon TZ offset. Time-zones acknowledge a fact about our world. Humans living in different places wake up, work, play, and sleep at different times. These times are (loosely) encoded in the offset. Get rid of that offset, put everyone on UTC, and you lose some information in the process.
ipqk 8y ago
Sorry, I poorly worded that (and even used the word literally. Sigh). My bad. I meant that we invented computers to do mathematical calculations, of which timezones are a great example. Getting rid of the timezones doesn't mean we get rid of computers. It just means all benefits we get from using computers for timezones are now lost. and we have to do mental calculations to figure out what 4:30am means at any given location.