4 ms·

> No, there will always be timezones, even if we call them something else. Even on swatch time, I still have to keep track of which one-hour window I can schedu

> No, there will always be timezones, even if we call them something else. Even on swatch time, I still have to keep track of which one-hour window I can schedule a multi-continent conference call in, Your missing the point. The fact that there are no timezones would mean everyone is on the same time, so it's much easier to schedule said hour. It makes coordination much easier. mseebach 56 minutes ago | link No, there will always be timezones, even if we call them something else. Even on swatch time, I still have to keep track of which one-hour window I can schedule a multi-continent conference call in, because my colleagues in New York aren't going to be in the office three hours before sunrise, no matter what their clocks say. > Now "he usually gets up before 2pm" means one thing, and "gets up before 4am" means another. It's still highly arbitrary. The only thing that would change is that the sun position per hour would change depending on where you are. I don't see the problem, honestly. The advantages of much easier global coordination would far outweigh this.

mseebach 15y ago
> The fact that there are no timezones would mean everyone is on the same time, so it's much easier to schedule said hour. It makes coordination much easier. No, everybody would not be on the same hour. I would still have to apply location knowledge to know when colleagues in other time zones get to the office, are likely to be out for lunch and leave in the evening. Example: It is now 13:00 in London. Let's pretend it's not Saturday, it's a perfectly good time for a catch-up chat, so I call my colleague in Silicon Valley, but he doesn't pick up. The fact that we might have decided that his watch should say 13:00 does not change the fact that he's probably just getting out of bed, as it's one hour and 40 minutes to sunrise there (or 6:00 with time zones applied). > It's still highly arbitrary. The only thing that would change is that the sun position per hour would change depending on where you are. But sun position is roughly how we organise our days. It's not like 2/3 of the worlds population is going to start sleeping through a significant portion of daylight hours to make global coordination easier. Time is an abstraction of sun position to make coordination easier. Changing the abstraction doesn't change the thing it's an abstraction of - so in computer science terms, you could say you're making the abstraction leaky.
- rue 15y ago
  With timezones, there's two pieces of information that one needs to be aware of: the given time, and the offset from your local time. Without timezones, the only information needed is the given time. Each party knows their local context, so everyone just deals with the absolute times. The latter is only problematic if you're “cold calling”, a situation which in reality would probably not be that big of an issue (you might know that your colleagues in LA are likely to be out for lunch at around 7500 beats just as you might know they're out around 12 local time which is N your time). … The swatch time is neat; I at some point also made a quick http://decimalti.me http://decimalti.me (the difference is that it's 0'd on UTC and it's divided into 100 000 units, rather than the 1000 beats).
- slowpoke 15y ago
  >No, everybody would not be on the same hour. Yes they would. That's the whole point, which you still seem to miss completely. With a global coordinated time, you will no longer have to care whether someone is in New York, Tokyo, Berlin or Moscow (or has, for example, an irregular sleep schedule). The only information you need is "when is this person available", and that time will not change no matter where you are. >It's not like 2/3 of the worlds population is going to start sleeping through a significant portion of daylight hours to make global coordination easier. Where did I say that people would need to adjust their sleep schedule? I've said that "the sun rises at 6, peaks at 12 and sets at 19 hours" is completely arbitrary. We could just as well say that sunrise is at 0, noon at 6 and evening at 11. Or any other numbers, really. It doesn't matter. >Time is an abstraction of sun position to make coordination easier. It's not an abstraction over sun position, it's an abstraction over the availability of a person. The sun position is merely the means which we used to anchor that abstraction. This made sense in a period where the world of most people extended from between the next three towns to maybe their neighboring countries at the utter maximum. In a globalized world with near-instantaneous communication, this anchoring no longer makes sense, so we should choose another (still arbitrary) anchoring, but one that's the same for every single person on this planet. Pretty much every argument I've ever heard against this is a status quo bias or an appeal to tradition, and your post is sadly no exception.
  - 15y ago

mseebach 15y ago

> The fact that there are no timezones would mean everyone is on the same time, so it's much easier to schedule said hour. It makes coordination much easier. No, everybody would not be on the same hour. I would still have to apply location knowledge to know when colleagues in other time zones get to the office, are likely to be out for lunch and leave in the evening. Example: It is now 13:00 in London. Let's pretend it's not Saturday, it's a perfectly good time for a catch-up chat, so I call my colleague in Silicon Valley, but he doesn't pick up. The fact that we might have decided that his watch should say 13:00 does not change the fact that he's probably just getting out of bed, as it's one hour and 40 minutes to sunrise there (or 6:00 with time zones applied). > It's still highly arbitrary. The only thing that would change is that the sun position per hour would change depending on where you are. But sun position is roughly how we organise our days. It's not like 2/3 of the worlds population is going to start sleeping through a significant portion of daylight hours to make global coordination easier. Time is an abstraction of sun position to make coordination easier. Changing the abstraction doesn't change the thing it's an abstraction of - so in computer science terms, you could say you're making the abstraction leaky.

rue 15y ago
With timezones, there's two pieces of information that one needs to be aware of: the given time, and the offset from your local time. Without timezones, the only information needed is the given time. Each party knows their local context, so everyone just deals with the absolute times. The latter is only problematic if you're “cold calling”, a situation which in reality would probably not be that big of an issue (you might know that your colleagues in LA are likely to be out for lunch at around 7500 beats just as you might know they're out around 12 local time which is N your time). … The swatch time is neat; I at some point also made a quick http://decimalti.me http://decimalti.me (the difference is that it's 0'd on UTC and it's divided into 100 000 units, rather than the 1000 beats).
slowpoke 15y ago
>No, everybody would not be on the same hour. Yes they would. That's the whole point, which you still seem to miss completely. With a global coordinated time, you will no longer have to care whether someone is in New York, Tokyo, Berlin or Moscow (or has, for example, an irregular sleep schedule). The only information you need is "when is this person available", and that time will not change no matter where you are. >It's not like 2/3 of the worlds population is going to start sleeping through a significant portion of daylight hours to make global coordination easier. Where did I say that people would need to adjust their sleep schedule? I've said that "the sun rises at 6, peaks at 12 and sets at 19 hours" is completely arbitrary. We could just as well say that sunrise is at 0, noon at 6 and evening at 11. Or any other numbers, really. It doesn't matter. >Time is an abstraction of sun position to make coordination easier. It's not an abstraction over sun position, it's an abstraction over the availability of a person. The sun position is merely the means which we used to anchor that abstraction. This made sense in a period where the world of most people extended from between the next three towns to maybe their neighboring countries at the utter maximum. In a globalized world with near-instantaneous communication, this anchoring no longer makes sense, so we should choose another (still arbitrary) anchoring, but one that's the same for every single person on this planet. Pretty much every argument I've ever heard against this is a status quo bias or an appeal to tradition, and your post is sadly no exception.
- 15y ago