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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#71

Post by andruby »

derefr wrote: post #65
edblarney wrote: post #19

The article is upside down. "Perhaps you’re asking why the Greenwich meridian gets to define earth time. " It doesn't. Everybody gets to have their own, proper time. In comparing times, we +/- based on an arbitrary spot, and that's it. Time zones are a great solution to a problem. People want their time in local terms. Everyone waking up and going to bed at different times is an utterly ridiculous concept. FYI - if y…

> Everyone waking up and going to bed at different times is an utterly ridiculous concept. For most of us who don't travel or communicate internationally much, sure. But for government ambassadors, military officers, and business executives? A single agreed-upon "Earth time" (even just between such people) would really help to keep track of how many hours they have until their next international flight or conference…

How would that "Earth Time" be different from the already existing UTC? When scheduling meetings with remote colleagues we always communicate the meeting time in UTC.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#72

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

pixie_ wrote: post #45
pfarnsworth wrote: post #29

Getting rid of Daylight Savings makes complete sense, and it's something we should really pursue. Getting rid of Time Zones is ridiculous. People know that 6am roughly is morning, and 6pm is roughly the evening. When you're dealing with someone internationally, you know not to call them at midnight their time because there's a high probability they may be sleeping. Having time roughly follow a standard around the wor…

We need permanent daylight savings time. Yesterday sunset was around 6pm in LA. Today it will be at 5pm. At least I had a little bit of daylight after work, now it's just depressing.

Yeah, the parent comment seems like something a person who enjoys spending all their time in front of a screen might say.

For anyone who's in to any (most?) outdoor activities, the extra evening daylight is likely appreciated. Where I live we can be rock climbing till 8pm on a week night all through December and January.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#73

Post by ithkuil »

mjevans wrote: post #30
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding UTC: when I've tried (as a European) to coordinate online meetings with Americans (working in tech companies) using times given in UTC, it's gone wrong about 50% of the time. Usually caused by people confusing UTC and British Summer Time (UTC+1).

Sadly, that's because they think UTC == GMT (which does have DST). UTC would be the time that computer software operates in and then feeds humans 'human time'. You also can't use 'Zulu' from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_time_zones either, for that same confusion. The problem, like with driving, is that humans are communicating the time to humans, instead of the 'smartest' humans having programmed co…

GMT has always zero offset from UTC. During daylight saving, the UK switches to another time zone called BST, with an offset of +1h. Other countries might call their summer time zone with a different name.

UTC != GMT because the former is not a time zone but a time standard. No country uses UTC as a time zone because UTC is not a time zone. All times in the GMT time zone are numerically equal to times expressed in UTC though.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#74

Post by deecewan »

conradev wrote: post #47
edblarney wrote: post #19

The article is upside down. "Perhaps you’re asking why the Greenwich meridian gets to define earth time. " It doesn't. Everybody gets to have their own, proper time. In comparing times, we +/- based on an arbitrary spot, and that's it. Time zones are a great solution to a problem. People want their time in local terms. Everyone waking up and going to bed at different times is an utterly ridiculous concept. FYI - if y…

> FYI - if you want to use UTC - you're free to do that today. I tried that out of curiosity once. It did not last very long. I generally organize my time into days: "I'll work on this today, on that tomorrow, and the other thing on Thursday", and I am awake when the sun is up. UTC made it so that the date changed in the middle of the afternoon, which made that abstraction unworkable.

I think this might be one of the biggest problems with this. People's days would change...in the middle of the day. It's hard enough to remember what date it is. Imagine if you had to remember two a day.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#76

Post by ebalit »

gwbas1c wrote: post #41

Ok, pretty much every comment here is about why time zones are important. I agree! But one thing to ponder: Just like telling time in 24-hour mode is useful, perhaps it will be useful to have some clocks display UTC? Perhaps it'll be useful to talk about international events in UTC? Perhaps instead of abolishing time zones, we just use UTC as a convention when talking about events that happen across time zones?

I also think that it's the right solution. The important thing is to disambiguate the timezone (UTC, CET, GMT, etc) and get rid of ambiguous time as much as possible.

I think it's similar to currencies. In a local shop, the currency is often implied. But on Internet, prices without currency is ambiguous and should be avoided.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#77

Post by ebalit »

jlgaddis wrote: post #66
gwbas1c wrote: post #41

Ok, pretty much every comment here is about why time zones are important. I agree! But one thing to ponder: Just like telling time in 24-hour mode is useful, perhaps it will be useful to have some clocks display UTC? Perhaps it'll be useful to talk about international events in UTC? Perhaps instead of abolishing time zones, we just use UTC as a convention when talking about events that happen across time zones?

For over 20 years, I've kept a clock near my computer desk that shows time in both my local time zone as well as UTC. I started doing it because I was pretty active in ham radio. I'm not now (and haven't been for many, many years) but I still use UTC several times a week. It's very handy when dealing with people/events/servers/etc. in different/multiple time zones. (Then again, I use 24 hour time everywhere so maybe…

24h time is the normal setting in France (and I think in most of Europe). Not that weird ;)

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#78

Post by [deleted] »

raldi wrote: post #68
pixie_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need permanent daylight savings time. Yesterday sunset was around 6pm in LA. Today it will be at 5pm. At least I had a little bit of daylight after work, now it's just depressing.

Without Standard Time, it would have been dark out until 7:40am today here in SF. That's really tough on people (or children) who have to be at work/school by 9 or even 8. By mid-December, sunrise wouldn't be until almost 8:30. In Seattle, it would be dark outside until 9am. Losing an hour of sleep in the spring is rough, but I'd rather do that (and get an extra hour in the fall) than have to get ready in the dark al…

[deleted]

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#79

Post by capkutay »

raldi wrote: post #68
pixie_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need permanent daylight savings time. Yesterday sunset was around 6pm in LA. Today it will be at 5pm. At least I had a little bit of daylight after work, now it's just depressing.

Without Standard Time, it would have been dark out until 7:40am today here in SF. That's really tough on people (or children) who have to be at work/school by 9 or even 8. By mid-December, sunrise wouldn't be until almost 8:30. In Seattle, it would be dark outside until 9am. Losing an hour of sleep in the spring is rough, but I'd rather do that (and get an extra hour in the fall) than have to get ready in the dark al…

Yes but when you look at time changes holistically, the CDC and sleep experts are recommending that schools start around 9 or 10 am.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sleep-scientists-sa...

http://www.startschoollater.net/why-change.html

I'm more and more convinced that most humans just aren't wired to wake up at the crack of dawn. The tech industry owes a lot of its hyper productivity to the fact that they have flexible hours for their engineers which tend to skew later into the day and night.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#80

Post by derefr »

andruby wrote: post #71
derefr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone waking up and going to bed at different times is an utterly ridiculous concept. For most of us who don't travel or communicate internationally much, sure. But for government ambassadors, military officers, and business executives? A single agreed-upon "Earth time" (even just between such people) would really help to keep track of how many hours they have until their next international flight or conference…

How would that "Earth Time" be different from the already existing UTC? When scheduling meetings with remote colleagues we always communicate the meeting time in UTC.

"You and your colleagues" can pre-arrange to do as you like. An "Earth time", if it existed, would be the result of a standardization effort to introduce a Schelling point, where you can expect other internationally-minded individuals and organizations to default to specifying times in terms of UTC.

With such a standard in place, it would be allowed to assume that when a person you've just met (i.e. not someone you've pre-arranged an idiolect with) says "I've got to meet a colleague at 3PM" that they mean "3PM UTC." If you based your actions on that assumption, and then that assumption turned out to be wrong, that'd be their fault for specifying a time-zone-less time in "globe-trotting company" when they meant anything other than UTC.

In short: an "Earth time" would be a matter of international etiquette, a social more of the cosmopolitan culture.

(The most obvious effect of this change in etiquette would be that, when you went to an international airport, all the times on the departure/arrival signs would be specified in UTC rather than relative to the local timezone the airport exists in. You'd be expected to do math to work out what local time that is, if you cared.)

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