Time Zones are unnecessary

MrOtingocni@lemmy.world · 12 days

They also complicate things.

It made more sense back before we had electric lighting and when everyone lived by the rising and setting of the sun. Now it doesn’t seem to really matter.

Obviously, the whole world deciding where to start the time would be nigh impossible but it could be like: starting at this date, on the first day of the year, what ever point is farthest away from the sun is 00:00 from henceforth.

And then people just adapted to what that meant for their particular area. Somebody’s morning might be 13:00!

Imagine if the whole world was on some global time schedule.

ViatorOmnium@piefed.social · 12 days

And now instead of need to know what time is it in California and Germany to schedule a meeting you need to know at what time people usually work in both places, because I’m pretty sure no one with an office job will be working in California at 11:00 UTC. At least now I know that if I schedule something I can just look at a single offset number to pick something that works for both sides. My real bane is DST and DST changing at different dates depending on the country.

So what problem would it solve?

cynar@lemmy.world · 12 days

We have that. It’s called UTC.

The problem is that time zones are convenient for most people. Most of the time you are only interested in local time, not global time. It’s rare to regularly have to coordinate across multiple time zones.

TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip · 12 days

It’s rare until you switch to a company with many international teams for every project.

CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works · 12 days

But even in that scenario, this change wouldn’t benefit you because instead of needing to lookup and convert potential meeting times into their time zone, you’d need to lookup and convert their offset work hours into your work hours to find something that works for both of you.

AirBreather@lemmy.world · 12 days

https://qntm.org/abolish

smitty@piefed.zip · 11 days

In the U.S. timezones were developed by the railroads before being written into law to keep the train traffic moving. I think they even called it railroad time. Back in the day when the big clock in town meant something … Imagine everyone setting 12:00 (noon) or ‘high noon’ with the sun directly overhead! There was no standard time nor timezones before we began traveling faster than the sun.

Tomtits@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 12 days

Those offices with clocks on the wall with all the different times of capital cities in other countries would be rather dull

slazer2au@lemmy.world · 12 days

Are you mistaking timezones for daylight savings?

JonnyRobbie@lemmy.world · 12 days

I think he’s really talking about timezones. And I see the argument (though I don’t necessarily agree with it). If I understand correctly, the point is that timezones is a tool so everyone has sun at the highest at 12:00, etc. And that made sense locally in the past. But ever since a globalisation and artificial lighting, that need has diminished.

Now in my opinion, that sure has weakened, but not gone away.

FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website · 12 days

Imagine if the whole world was on some global time schedule.

UTC.

What’s the fascination with this topic? Time zones are a major accomplishment because they allow us to schedule things further than our city limits. A train schedule leaving London and going to Paris, Cologne, Berlin, Warsaw, Kiev, Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, etc. would be difficult to plan without them. Even this new time, let’s call it BST, still needs time zones. Adjacent places need to agree on a common time. So we have accomplished nothing other than people having to learn their new 7am is 16:00. Which is counterintuitive.

The only country that clearly doesn’t give a shit about time zones is PR China. And the only reason why you haven’t heard many people thousands of miles west of Beijing having to live on Beijing time complain is the fact that it’s the more sparsely populated areas, the more troubled, and the fact that criticising a decision by the communist party carries the danger of being sent to a reeducation camp even if you’re neither a Uyghur nor a Tibetan.

Abolish DST and the few half hour zones and UTC will be just fine.

buried_treasure@feddit.uk · 12 days

A train schedule leaving London and going to Paris, Cologne, Berlin, Warsaw, Kiev, Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, etc. would be difficult to plan without [time zones]

I don’t see that. If you know it takes the train 90 minutes to go between London and Paris, another 2 hours to Berlin, and a further 3 hours to Moscow, what difference does the presence or absence of time zones make in terms of scheduling that service?

Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world · 12 days

You are right. I’m not sure why everyone refuses to let the sun rise at 3pm. It doesn’t care. But I guess that’s probably how the general population would react to your idea. They really just can’t change.

MrOtingocni@lemmy.world · 12 days

Lol, look at the downvotes. Even smart people who populated places like the fediverse have negative, almost visceral, reactions to any suggested change of historic systems.

In this respect, people are as predictable as clockwork.

🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social · 12 days

So you’re fine with midnight being sunny?