5 ms·

I vehemently disagree. I think the problems that this causes are larger than the current solution. Timezones aren't a human construction. Humans have only offe

by majika 15y ago

I vehemently disagree. I think the problems that this causes are larger than the current solution. Timezones aren't a human construction. Humans have only offered a series of approximations that are accurate enough. Cognitive dissonance: What time is the business day of Shanghai? What time should I arrive in New York to get there in the morning? What time will my American guildmates be online? People would still have to memorise the major timezone offsets, and this would negate any purported advantages. If we're still going to have to memorise timezone offsets, why bother? Rather than asking "what's the time in New York?," I'll be asking "what part of the day is it in New York?" The latter will be asked in place of the other, but it would also be harder to answer due to no localised New York time. "What's the time in New York?" can be answered by knowing that American EST is GMT-5. My local timezone is GMT+10, and it's currently 1300. Hence, I now know that it's 12 PM in New York, which means it's dark, which means that businesses there are shut and it's a bad time to call friends there. I'll admit that DST makes things harder, but I can still calculate a good approximation on the fly. 11 or 12 PM - it doesn't really matter. If it does, well, I know that the northern hemisphere will be at the end of Autumn, so NY-local DST is probably over. With one global timezone, how do I answer "what part of the day is it in New York?" Well, I still have to remember that New York's "timezone" is -4 GMT, and I still have to remember that my local "timezone" is +10 GMT. I still have to do a calculation, but I have to have a mapping of times to the state of the day in my head to know where New York is in relation. It's so much more complicated. It also makes it hard to know "when" a certain place is. Say I arrive in London, and it's overcast. I'd actually have to calculate what part of the day it is, by working off my home time->day-state mapping. That's so wrong.

muyuu 15y ago
Nowadays synchronization matters a lot more than knowing "what part of the day" is it in a given place. Take into consideration that "parts of the day" work within similar ranges of distance to the equator. If we all used UTC, for instance, I'd only have to work approximately what time do people work and have their meals in different parts of the world, and arranging a call, for instance, would always be trivial. When talking about a time all parties would know it they can make it or not straight away. Time zones are a relic from the 20th century as far as I'm concerned, but they might as well stick forever.
- PotatoEngineer 15y ago
  Synchronizing schedules across many time zones is a problem for a pretty small proportion of the populace. Who needs to regularly worry about people 8 time zones away? Maybe 25% of all people in IT (I'll estimate high because outsourcing is popular), and maybe 5% of all white-collar jobs. And, one more number made up on the spot... call that 2% of the world population. And that's being generous. Time zones work for 98% of the world, the 2% will just have to do a little more thinking.
  - muyuu 15y ago
    Anything would work for the vast majority of the world as long as it was stable. That shouldn't stop us from not artificially making it worse.
muuh-gnu 15y ago
> Rather than asking "what's the time in New York?," I'll be asking "what part of the day is it in New York?" Except that the current time zones dont really tell you that, sice most of them are decided politically, not by mapping to sunrise/sunset as closely as possible. The world time zone map is a irrational mess, including time jumps of 2-3 hours when crossing a land border, or time zones changing backwards becuse of convulted political borders. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Standard_time_zones_of_the_world.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Standard_...
- majika 15y ago
  Actually, yes, the current timezones do tell me that. The time known as 7 AM is early morning everywhere. 11 AM is late morning everywhere. 2 PM is early afternoon everywhere. 8 PM is mid evening everywhere. By their definition, timezones are 100% accurate for telling the "part of the day". They're inaccurate in the sense of telling where the sun is in the sky - not too big of a deal, really. But even then, they're close enough for casual purposes.

by majika 15y ago

muyuu 15y ago

Nowadays synchronization matters a lot more than knowing "what part of the day" is it in a given place. Take into consideration that "parts of the day" work within similar ranges of distance to the equator. If we all used UTC, for instance, I'd only have to work approximately what time do people work and have their meals in different parts of the world, and arranging a call, for instance, would always be trivial. When talking about a time all parties would know it they can make it or not straight away. Time zones are a relic from the 20th century as far as I'm concerned, but they might as well stick forever.

PotatoEngineer 15y ago
Synchronizing schedules across many time zones is a problem for a pretty small proportion of the populace. Who needs to regularly worry about people 8 time zones away? Maybe 25% of all people in IT (I'll estimate high because outsourcing is popular), and maybe 5% of all white-collar jobs. And, one more number made up on the spot... call that 2% of the world population. And that's being generous. Time zones work for 98% of the world, the 2% will just have to do a little more thinking.
- muyuu 15y ago
  Anything would work for the vast majority of the world as long as it was stable. That shouldn't stop us from not artificially making it worse.

muuh-gnu 15y ago

> Rather than asking "what's the time in New York?," I'll be asking "what part of the day is it in New York?" Except that the current time zones dont really tell you that, sice most of them are decided politically, not by mapping to sunrise/sunset as closely as possible. The world time zone map is a irrational mess, including time jumps of 2-3 hours when crossing a land border, or time zones changing backwards becuse of convulted political borders. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Standard_time_zones_of_the_world.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Standard_...

majika 15y ago
Actually, yes, the current timezones do tell me that. The time known as 7 AM is early morning everywhere. 11 AM is late morning everywhere. 2 PM is early afternoon everywhere. 8 PM is mid evening everywhere. By their definition, timezones are 100% accurate for telling the "part of the day". They're inaccurate in the sense of telling where the sun is in the sky - not too big of a deal, really. But even then, they're close enough for casual purposes.