3 ms·
"readjusted their schedules" is such a ridiculous hand-waving away of serious problems with the idea. One of the biggest problems is that weekdays completely c
by henrikschroder 7y ago
"readjusted their schedules" is such a ridiculous hand-waving away of serious problems with the idea.
One of the biggest problems is that weekdays completely cease to make sense. With timezones, the day of the week changes at midnight, when most people are asleep. You wake up in the morning, it's a new weekday, and it's the same weekday for as long as the sun is in the sky.
If we abolish timezones and choose UTC as the one time, the day of the week will change at 5pm in San Francisco. Say that you have an establishment that is normally closed on Sundays. It's 4pm on a Saturday, do you close in an hour because it is then Sunday? Or do you change your "schedule" so that your establishment is closed on SundayMondays instead? Or perhaps you keep it closed on SaturdaySundays? Because the concept of "Sunday" doesn't make sense anymore, "Sunday" is no longer a contiguous period of normal waking hours.
In San Francisco. In London it's business as usual. But in Sydney the day of the week changes at 10am. When is "Sunday morning"? 9am Sunday morning is the day after 10am Sunday morning. Every week has two Sunday mornings now. (And two Monday mornings!) Which one of them did you mean?
Adjusting computer systems is much, much simpler than getting humans to accept this idiotic system.
- erinaceousjones 7y ago> Adjusting computer systems is much, much simpler than getting humans to accept this idiotic system. Agreed -- I think of timezones much like coordinate systems: They're all representing the same point in (space|time), just in a slightly different format, each with different benefits/setbacks for biological things vs electronical things. Like latitudes and longitudes vs UTM coordinates vs local grid coordinates. "Number of milliseconds since January 1st 1970" can still describe the same global time-point as "First of July, 2019, noon". Timezones are there for people. Everything else can normalize on UTC. That being said, I think the "universal" in coordinated universal time is a bit of a misnomer -- at some point in our interstellar future, are we going to have to start thinking more about factoring in time dilation? :-) we already have "coordinated Mars time".. Are we going to have an intergalactic day of many noons..
- evandev 7y agoAnd getting humans to accept the system is easier than changing laws that specify when things can be open/closed. E.g. The US Postal Service, drinking establishments, hunting laws.
- z2 7y agoAnd even if those adjustments are somehow accepted, travelling anywhere longitudinally will be a world of pain to the traveler, to re-learn what should be common sense on the 'local' time to wake up, time for lunch, days of the weekend...
- henrikschroder 7y agoIf only there was a system, some kind of longitudinal "zones" maybe, that would help your smartphone auto-adjust so it could show you when things like working hours, lunch, afternoon, etc occurs in the place you're in...