5 ms·

Would a better system for our society be to just have a universal time? Like, what if everyone in the whole world just set their clocks to UTC+0:00, and never

Would a better system for our society be to just have a universal time? Like, what if everyone in the whole world just set their clocks to UTC+0:00, and never ever changed it. They would just plan everything relative to that. I might work from 9-5 in one place, but in another someone would work from 3pm-11pm (still during daylight hours). That is to say, why do we try to synchronize our numbers with the sunlight? Is it that important that every culture gets to say that 12pm is midday? It does seem weird that it may be customary to eat lunch at 12pm in one place, but have it normal to eat lunch at 4:30am in another. But is it any weirder than having arbitrary discrete jumps in time based on geography and time-of-year?

ars 14y ago
No, that would not be a better system. You are just pushing the complexity somewhere else. It might make computer programming a bit easier, but everything else would be harder. And people still sleep at night, so you would still need to know when they are awake, when they work.
- lifeformed 14y ago
  It wouldn't be easier just for computing. If I need to coordinate stuff with someone in a different time zone, it'd be much easier to be able to just say "Let's have a call at 4pm," instead of figuring out what his timezone is. I guess you'd still have to know if 4pm is a good time for him though. So he'd have to have some sort of indicator of what the waking/working hours are in his region... some sort of time zone. Nevermind, the more I think about it the more I realize that timezones are pretty reasonable.
  - ars 14y ago
    LOL, I was about to reply exactly that, then you answered your own question.
- dragonwriter 14y ago
  > You are just pushing the complexity somewhere else. It might make computer programming a bit easier, but everything else would be harder. It would make communicating times easier and less prone to confusion. > And people still sleep at night, so you would still need to know when they are awake, when they work. Right, you would need to know when the particular people you are dealing with would be available, but when communicating times to coordinate an event, the numbers used would have the same meaning. I don't see where any complexity is being added to compensate for that that is being lost.
  - ars 14y ago
    > I don't see where any complexity is being added to compensate for that that is being lost. You are focusing on only a single usage of a clock: To coordinate time to speak. Clocks are used for much more than that, for example: Our store hours are 9-5 days, well no, 9-5 in this city, but in that city it's 8:30-4:30, and so on and so on. Every place you go you'll have to find out the local time when stores close, or when a tv show is on. Of course you could setup regional borders where all the cities in that area close at the same time. Maybe we'll call it zones instead of areas - I know! Call it time zones! Or laws like: Checks must be cashed if received before 4PM that day. Except now you'll have to create a system to be able to say, no, it's 4PM in this city, but in that city it's 3PM. Congratulations: You've just invented time zones.
    - dragonwriter 14y ago
      > Every place you go you'll have to find out the local time when stores close, or when a tv show is on. You actually have to find that out for specific stores even with local time, and TV showtimes actually vary by location now (sometimes because they shown at constant universal time, sometimes because they are shown at region-specific time that doesn't happen to equate to a constant either in local or universal time), so neither of those is an additional cost.
      - mynameisvlad 14y ago
        Sure, but you can make a reasonable assumption that they're open in between certain hours of the day. I can make a reasonable assumption and say stores are open 11am-4pm everywhere, and I'd be right more times than not. With a universal time, you'd need to keep track of what "11am-4pm" translates to in your local area and determine it that way.
codev 14y ago
Swatch had a time system like that for a while: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time 1000 beats in a day, 0 is midnight at UTC+1 but it doesn't adjust for time zones. It never took off and I think they scrapped it but it would be useful for coordinating between time zones. I'm sure people would fairly quickly adjust to it for their longitude but it'd be very confusing when you were travelling.
eric-hu 14y ago
This is what China does. All time there is specified as UTC +08:00. I studied abroad in Beijing--the time felt "normal" there as the sun would rise around 7 AM and set around 5 PM in the winter. When visiting Lhasa, those times were shifted to 8:30 AM and 7 PM. It felt somewhat disorienting.

ars 14y ago

No, that would not be a better system. You are just pushing the complexity somewhere else. It might make computer programming a bit easier, but everything else would be harder. And people still sleep at night, so you would still need to know when they are awake, when they work.

lifeformed 14y ago
It wouldn't be easier just for computing. If I need to coordinate stuff with someone in a different time zone, it'd be much easier to be able to just say "Let's have a call at 4pm," instead of figuring out what his timezone is. I guess you'd still have to know if 4pm is a good time for him though. So he'd have to have some sort of indicator of what the waking/working hours are in his region... some sort of time zone. Nevermind, the more I think about it the more I realize that timezones are pretty reasonable.
- ars 14y ago
  LOL, I was about to reply exactly that, then you answered your own question.
dragonwriter 14y ago
> You are just pushing the complexity somewhere else. It might make computer programming a bit easier, but everything else would be harder. It would make communicating times easier and less prone to confusion. > And people still sleep at night, so you would still need to know when they are awake, when they work. Right, you would need to know when the particular people you are dealing with would be available, but when communicating times to coordinate an event, the numbers used would have the same meaning. I don't see where any complexity is being added to compensate for that that is being lost.
- ars 14y ago
  > I don't see where any complexity is being added to compensate for that that is being lost. You are focusing on only a single usage of a clock: To coordinate time to speak. Clocks are used for much more than that, for example: Our store hours are 9-5 days, well no, 9-5 in this city, but in that city it's 8:30-4:30, and so on and so on. Every place you go you'll have to find out the local time when stores close, or when a tv show is on. Of course you could setup regional borders where all the cities in that area close at the same time. Maybe we'll call it zones instead of areas - I know! Call it time zones! Or laws like: Checks must be cashed if received before 4PM that day. Except now you'll have to create a system to be able to say, no, it's 4PM in this city, but in that city it's 3PM. Congratulations: You've just invented time zones.
  - dragonwriter 14y ago
    > Every place you go you'll have to find out the local time when stores close, or when a tv show is on. You actually have to find that out for specific stores even with local time, and TV showtimes actually vary by location now (sometimes because they shown at constant universal time, sometimes because they are shown at region-specific time that doesn't happen to equate to a constant either in local or universal time), so neither of those is an additional cost.
    - mynameisvlad 14y ago
      Sure, but you can make a reasonable assumption that they're open in between certain hours of the day. I can make a reasonable assumption and say stores are open 11am-4pm everywhere, and I'd be right more times than not. With a universal time, you'd need to keep track of what "11am-4pm" translates to in your local area and determine it that way.

codev 14y ago

Swatch had a time system like that for a while: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time 1000 beats in a day, 0 is midnight at UTC+1 but it doesn't adjust for time zones. It never took off and I think they scrapped it but it would be useful for coordinating between time zones. I'm sure people would fairly quickly adjust to it for their longitude but it'd be very confusing when you were travelling.

eric-hu 14y ago

This is what China does. All time there is specified as UTC +08:00. I studied abroad in Beijing--the time felt "normal" there as the sun would rise around 7 AM and set around 5 PM in the winter. When visiting Lhasa, those times were shifted to 8:30 AM and 7 PM. It felt somewhat disorienting.