this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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All DST and time zones should be removed and we should only have one global time. People in different locations would just get up at different times on the clock. Communication about times would get so much easier, communication about schedules would get so much easier. "The same time every week" would have an actual meaning all year around regardless of any notions about getting up later relative to local sunrise in the darker time of the year.
This solves making the statement "let's meet at 5" be more clear globally, but doesn't solve the actual confusion. Person A getting up hours before normal, being in the middle of person B's day, and being when person C would go to bed still happens. All it does is destroy any frame of reference and make travel more difficult. You would still need a chart to know if any time was actually during waking or business hours at each location on earth.
It would reduce the problem to its essential complexity. Obviously if you coordinate with people from all over the world you need to check availability anyway, but at least that would be as easy as saying "Are you free at time x?" to everyone and not "Are you free at time x+offset that is different for every participant?"
It's still the same problem, just instead of saying that's midnight here, it changes to that's functionally midnight here.
Lots of people in your own time zone do not get up or sleep at the "standard times" for that time zone anyway. Time zones do not solve the issue you mention.
After about 2 days you won't need a chart to know the time offset does to someone's waking hours. Unless of course you have a learning disability.
I have to look up the difference for every time zone not adjacent to my own now, I don't expect I'd remember France's preferred hours any more than I remember the time difference.
And right now you can go look at a map of time zones. Time zones are no where near the issue that date formats are
I agree that date formats other than ISO8601 ones are bad too but time zones, particularly combined with DST, wider time zones than standard and DST going the other way on the southern hemisphere are much, much more complicated than trying to figure out date formats.
Except that it wouldn't. It would make communication about time a culture sensitive topic. Sure, the exact time of day in relation to the position of the sun might get lost with our current system, but if someone tells you "I've slept til 12am" at least you know it was somewhat around noon. Under your new system you'd always have to consider where someone lives.
erm... 12am is midnight
Ahem. Oops.
But in a way that's a good example for what I meant. You and me communicate time both in reference to the time of day, not a virtual time of the planet that means something else to everyone depending on location, and you easily could spot my mistake.
So let's just say I did that on purpose.
Is being able to communicate about stuff like that casually, where you do not mean a specific time anyway, really worth the giant pile of pain that time zones add to actual scheduling?
I mean what's more important to you, being able drop the info about time zones when scheduling international meetings, or preserving humanities ability to communicate time respectively to the actual time of day?
I've lived in three countries so far and never actually had trouble scheduling anything. The concept of time of day on the other hand is pretty prevalent in my daily life.
I suspect the language would change for those scenarios, so maybe you would say "I slept until midday" rather than "I slept until 12pm".
It is easy to remember, the am/pm system works the way that doesn't make sense (10am,11am,12pm...10pm,11pm,12am) unless you mentally substitute 0 for every 12.
The position of the sun is already not exact relative to the time. Check when the sun rises and sets for you. Very random times. The further away from the equator you are the fuckier they get.
Swatch did this years ago... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time
I think it would have worked better if it hadn't tried to decimalize time too.
I got multiple of my friends on GMT/UTC and it's the best thing ever. Time is guaranteed and simple with them.
I totally agree. It's not like the ~7-1700 time for my sunlight hours is super intuitive. If it was 23-11, I'd be fine after a few months, and a lot of problems would be solved.
China does this
I've thought the same thing before. The time of day is a completely arbitrary number.
Are you okay with being the one in perpetual darkness for all working and living hours while someone on the other side of the world gets to live "normally"?
You misunderstood
You would just change the time you consider "working and living hours" based on when daylight is for you, e.g. if sunrise is at 1400 (instead of, say, 0700), your "day" would be from 1400 to 2300.