4 ms·

Yup; it's not impossible; but think of how much more complicated the interface would become. There would have to be a whole lot of little, wordy labels instead

by jtheory 12y ago

Yup; it's not impossible; but think of how much more complicated the interface would become. There would have to be a whole lot of little, wordy labels instead of simply showing the time. Times (with shared meanings) are good shorthand. If we discard the shared meanings, we'll need something else to replace them when we're talking to people outside our part of the world (which, of course, is happening more & more). A "9-5 job" would become... what? A "most common workday start time to most common workday end time job"? "I was up coding last night until 3am" would have to be something like "I was up coding last night until 6 hours before the next day's standard workday start". ["Until 3 hours before dawn" was my first thought, but that's not very meaningful -- staying up until 3am is pretty much the same even though the sunup time may vary widely depending on location and time of year...] If you're talking to someone who lives in Barcelona, and you say "oh, I should probably let you go -- is it almost dinner time?" -- because it's 6pm in CET -- she may respond "oh, no -- most people here don't have dinner until 9 or 10pm". That's interesting, right? But how do you even have that conversation without sharing a time/meaning shorthand?

icebraining 12y ago
A "9-5 job" would become... what? A "most common workday start time to most common workday end time job"? It'd become the same as in any country which doesn't have that particular expression, that is, probably most of them. "I was up coding last night until 3am" would have to be something like "I was up coding last night until 6 hours before the next day's standard workday start". There's no such standard; different countries have different business hours, so to a foreigner "3am" doesn't tell her that it's "6 hours before the next day's standard workday start", and to a local you can just say the actual time, since she would know the new "standard", whatever it'd be.
- jtheory 12y ago
  Can you give some examples of parts of the world that have different standard business hours from 9 to 5? In your explanation, don't use times as reference points. ... Yes, of course there are variations in standards; but that makes times all the more valuable as reference points. People in Saudi Arabia, for example, will have similar ideas of "what people do" around 6pm, and if they work with someone in Argentina, they can have an interesting conversation figuring out how Argentinians are different (and how they're the same). But if they lose time as a shorthand, it's suddenly really hard to have that conversation.
coldtea 12y ago
>Yup; it's not impossible; but think of how much more complicated the interface would become. There would have to be a whole lot of little, wordy labels instead of simply showing the time. Or, you know, it would just be something like "+6" (meaning 6 hours ahead of your time in their daily cycle), etc. I mean, it's like a lot of people commenting against this hasn't paid any thought to it at all...
- jtheory 12y ago
  > Or, you know, it would just be something like "+6" (meaning 6 hours ahead of your time in their daily cycle), etc. That's re-inventing time zones for this timezone-free world, though, isn't it? The problem is that timezones would still exist (as you point out -- that +6 must come from somewhere...), but because they would be unofficial and no longer standardized, it would be harder to know. Every city would need to figure out "standard business hours" somehow -- because an awful lot of businesses talk to each other during their working hours. Neighboring cities would need to coordinate, somehow. But how would worldtimebuddy know whether to display "+6" or "+7" for a given city? They can't just guess it on sun cycles; sunset in London varies from 4 pm to 9:30 pm, and of course some people live further north (or south) than that -- and "working day" hours aren't bound very tightly to sun cycles anyway.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >The problem is that timezones would still exist (as you point out -- that +6 must come from somewhere...), but because they would be unofficial and no longer standardized, it would be harder to know. Who said they would be "unofficial and no longer standardized"? They could be both, fully. We also have the perfectly official and standadized meridians, that are better handled than the ad-hoc timezones we use (that sometimes go over several meridians, use DST etc). The proposal is about getting rid of timezones in the sense of having a fixed, global time. Not about getting rid of timezone information completely. It simplifies tons of everyday interactions and calculations, and when one needs to know the other's "time in the daily cycle", it regresses to exactly knowing the kind of information we need to know now.

by jtheory 12y ago

icebraining 12y ago

A "9-5 job" would become... what? A "most common workday start time to most common workday end time job"? It'd become the same as in any country which doesn't have that particular expression, that is, probably most of them. "I was up coding last night until 3am" would have to be something like "I was up coding last night until 6 hours before the next day's standard workday start". There's no such standard; different countries have different business hours, so to a foreigner "3am" doesn't tell her that it's "6 hours before the next day's standard workday start", and to a local you can just say the actual time, since she would know the new "standard", whatever it'd be.

jtheory 12y ago
Can you give some examples of parts of the world that have different standard business hours from 9 to 5? In your explanation, don't use times as reference points. ... Yes, of course there are variations in standards; but that makes times all the more valuable as reference points. People in Saudi Arabia, for example, will have similar ideas of "what people do" around 6pm, and if they work with someone in Argentina, they can have an interesting conversation figuring out how Argentinians are different (and how they're the same). But if they lose time as a shorthand, it's suddenly really hard to have that conversation.

coldtea 12y ago

>Yup; it's not impossible; but think of how much more complicated the interface would become. There would have to be a whole lot of little, wordy labels instead of simply showing the time. Or, you know, it would just be something like "+6" (meaning 6 hours ahead of your time in their daily cycle), etc. I mean, it's like a lot of people commenting against this hasn't paid any thought to it at all...

jtheory 12y ago
> Or, you know, it would just be something like "+6" (meaning 6 hours ahead of your time in their daily cycle), etc. That's re-inventing time zones for this timezone-free world, though, isn't it? The problem is that timezones would still exist (as you point out -- that +6 must come from somewhere...), but because they would be unofficial and no longer standardized, it would be harder to know. Every city would need to figure out "standard business hours" somehow -- because an awful lot of businesses talk to each other during their working hours. Neighboring cities would need to coordinate, somehow. But how would worldtimebuddy know whether to display "+6" or "+7" for a given city? They can't just guess it on sun cycles; sunset in London varies from 4 pm to 9:30 pm, and of course some people live further north (or south) than that -- and "working day" hours aren't bound very tightly to sun cycles anyway.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >The problem is that timezones would still exist (as you point out -- that +6 must come from somewhere...), but because they would be unofficial and no longer standardized, it would be harder to know. Who said they would be "unofficial and no longer standardized"? They could be both, fully. We also have the perfectly official and standadized meridians, that are better handled than the ad-hoc timezones we use (that sometimes go over several meridians, use DST etc). The proposal is about getting rid of timezones in the sense of having a fixed, global time. Not about getting rid of timezone information completely. It simplifies tons of everyday interactions and calculations, and when one needs to know the other's "time in the daily cycle", it regresses to exactly knowing the kind of information we need to know now.