3 ms·

Previous to the rise of the railroad, each place's time was based on solar noon. That is, when the sun was at the highest point. Which worked fine. It only beca

Previous to the rise of the railroad, each place's time was based on solar noon. That is, when the sun was at the highest point. Which worked fine. It only became untenable when you needed to manually maintain and publish a railroad schedule. So time zones became a thing. Initially they were on a per-railroad basis, but eventually they got unified. But now we have computers to do all the bookkeeping. So if we wanted, we could not only return to the previous approach, but take it further to infinite time zones. Your noon is whenever the sun is overhead for you. Our calendars always include locations for events, so the time difference is compensated for. Google Maps knows that if you're traveling east or west a significant distance to make it to an event, it needs to adjust the time. Etc, etc.

JamesLeonis 3y ago
Knowing the longitude between yourself and the event is enough information. A sundial is always locally correct as well. This could be calculated in Airplane Mode using only GPS too. Longitude 0 would be the universal clock for network applications. Uh oh. I'm starting to think this is a good idea...
postmodest 3y ago
We should discuss this in a zoom call. I've scheduled it for eleven-fleventy χm. Don't be late! ...the need to synchronize global tasks means that either you have easily-offset local times, or you just use UTC everywhere and keep it in your head when local wake / sleep is and refuse synchronized tasks outside those times.
- wpietri 3y ago
  No, that's part of the manual-scheduling paperwork. I get that you're used to it, but we could eliminate it. The dialog would go more like: "I looked at our calendars and put it at a time that seems to work for both of us. Feel free to move it if that's better for you." Which is what I often do anyhow with Google Calendar with shared access (as when we work for the same company) or as with Calendly.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    https://qntm.org/continuous https://qntm.org/continuous
    - wpietri 3y ago
      That is a good rant, but I think it's wildly overstated. E.g., The whole notion of a timetable is an early-railroad-era artifact. By modern standards, it's a terrible interface. Them not being viable is great. I should note that I'm not seriously proposing it. My point is more to get people thinking. Our current hodgepodge approach is extremely historically contingent. I personally believe that there's no good solution to this, just different bad ones.

JamesLeonis 3y ago

Knowing the longitude between yourself and the event is enough information. A sundial is always locally correct as well. This could be calculated in Airplane Mode using only GPS too. Longitude 0 would be the universal clock for network applications. Uh oh. I'm starting to think this is a good idea...

postmodest 3y ago

We should discuss this in a zoom call. I've scheduled it for eleven-fleventy χm. Don't be late! ...the need to synchronize global tasks means that either you have easily-offset local times, or you just use UTC everywhere and keep it in your head when local wake / sleep is and refuse synchronized tasks outside those times.

wpietri 3y ago
No, that's part of the manual-scheduling paperwork. I get that you're used to it, but we could eliminate it. The dialog would go more like: "I looked at our calendars and put it at a time that seems to work for both of us. Feel free to move it if that's better for you." Which is what I often do anyhow with Google Calendar with shared access (as when we work for the same company) or as with Calendly.
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  https://qntm.org/continuous https://qntm.org/continuous
  - wpietri 3y ago
    That is a good rant, but I think it's wildly overstated. E.g., The whole notion of a timetable is an early-railroad-era artifact. By modern standards, it's a terrible interface. Them not being viable is great. I should note that I'm not seriously proposing it. My point is more to get people thinking. Our current hodgepodge approach is extremely historically contingent. I personally believe that there's no good solution to this, just different bad ones.