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[entremet]

Let us all — wherever and whenever — live on what the world’s timekeepers call Coordinated Universal Time, or U.T.C. (though “earth time” might be less presumptuous). When it’s noon in Greenwich, Britain, let it be 12 everywhere. No more resetting the clocks. No more wondering what time it is in Peoria or Petropavlovsk. Our biological clocks can stay with the sun, as they have from the dawn of history. Only the numerals will change, and they have always been arbitrary.

Some mental adjustment will be necessary at first. Every place will learn a new relationship with the hours. New York (with its longitudinal companions) will be the place where people breakfast at noon, where the sun reaches its zenith around 4 p.m., and where people start dinner close to midnight. (“Midnight” will come to seem a quaint word for the zero hour, where the sun still shines.) In Sydney, the sun will set around 7 a.m., but the Australians can handle it; after all, their winter comes in June.

The human relationship with time changed substantially with the arrival of modernity — trains and telegraphs and wristwatches all around — and we can see it changing yet again in our globally networked era. We should synchronize our watches for real.

As someone that works on an international team, I would love this.

Timekeeping in man made construct, we can change it to meet our needs. Remember, clocks didn't even have a minute hand until recently in human history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/sunday/time-to-dump-time-zones.html

 

[kunonabi]

No thanks, it's perfectly fine the way it is.

 

[Kinitari]

A thousand thousand software developers perk up, hope in their eyes

 

[How About No]

I volunteer my time zone to have mid-day at midnight

 

[Zaru]

This will happen right after the US adopts the metric system.

 

[Smooth Operator]

No thanks, it's perfectly fine the way it is.

Edit : nvm, i'm tired, sorry !

 

[Frankfurter]

I'm all for it, but only because it would be a minor change (GMT+1 here) for me lol.

 

[JeffGrubb]

No thanks, it's perfectly fine the way it is.

It isn't. One universal time for everywhere would solve so many problems.

 

[_woLf]

This is a dumb idea, imo. It is nice to our brains to know generally what time our bodies should go to sleep and what times it needs to wake up. It's an organization method. Having no timezones would make that a lot more difficult and would make the process of visiting an area outside of your normal time very hard to get used to. You'd lose track of appointments, your body would be confused at the time you go to sleep, etc. We could probably get used to it, but why?

That being said, daylight savings needs to go away. That shit is dumb and not necessary anymore.

 

[KurtSloane]

No thanks, it's perfectly fine the way it is.

Agreed, new york times puts out some drivel these days.

 

[B-Dubs]

As someone who has to deal with multiple time zones on a regular basis, this would be awesome.

 

[Hoo-doo]

We need Swatch internet time. It's 860 beats right now.

 

[gamma]

Yeah, always fun to watch fighting games tournament at 5am when you're in Europe :-/

What do times zones have to do with that?

 

[Salamando]

But then Dolly Parton's "Nine to Five" will only make sense on the GMT!

 

[Steiner84]

worst idea i heard in a long time..

if you need universal time, feel free to use it in your team. the rest of the world can continue to be sane.

 

[Codeblue]

Yeah, always fun to watch fighting games tournament at 5am when you're in Europe :-/

You'd still be watching it at dawn, the number would just change.

 

[JeffGrubb]

Yeah, always fun to watch fighting games tournament at 5am when you're in Europe :-/

I mean ... you'd still have to get up early, but early for you would just be called 8 p.m.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

It doesn't solve the fact that people are awake at different specific times based on the fact that the sun does not hit all places on Earth identically at all times. What does it matter if people in Los Angeles work from noon to nine PM if people in Japan still have to stay up until the middle of the night to get on a conference call with them? Relative time works fine and it gives us a common ground so we can understand a general concept of where light is hitting at any particular point. It's midnight in Russia... so is the sun shining or not?

 

[axisofweevils]

Time for the glorious return of Swatch internet time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

 

[David Incorporated Esq.]

Why

 

[George Oscar Bluth II]

Sure.

I'm in London so it won't matter to me.

 

[Henkka]

Yeah, always fun to watch fighting games tournament at 5am when you're in Europe :-/

Uh, it would be just as inconvenient to watch something happening in the US if it was changed.

 

[BarringGaffner]

Yeah, always fun to watch fighting games tournament at 5am when you're in Europe :-/

That's not going to change. People would still sleep at night all over the world.

It would just be 5am in both locations.

 

[Azerare]

This will happen right after the US adopts the metric system.

Yup this really covers it.

I'm just fine and used to timezones now. I wouldn't gain any benefit for switching so I'm good on not going out of my way to adjust to a new one.

 

[TheTylerRob]

Why didn't we think of all having night time at the same time? Thank god the Times is on it.

 

[Wolfe]

Yeah, always fun to watch fighting games tournament at 5am when you're in Europe :-/

Dude...

 

[Hidden One]

Some people just really sit around a table like "Hey let's change the time zones ya'll"

 

[tim.mbp]

Let's all switch to metric first.

 

[Window]

The article is not very convincing as it does little to explain the benefits of this outside of citing an Economics professor vaguely stating that it's efficient. I can see it happening though. With increased communications and business conducted across massive distances, timekeeping may be easier when working with a direct common point of reference instead. How much of a benefit is that really though?

Edit: Good point about time zones providing context on daylight at different places. I can't imagine dealing with that would be easier with no time zones.

 

[D i Z]

Sure. Let's just ignore the sun and its relevance in how we tend to do most of our labor and social functions while it's up.

 

[jstripes]

 

[JeffGrubb]

It's high three

 

[dragonelite]

A thousand thousand software developers perk up, hope in their eyes

haha, i got that reference dam date time in programming.

 

[HideyoshiJP]

Time zones are great. You can travel across them and not have to fuck with your alarm if you are staying overnight. Noon is the middle of the day no matter where you go. Local time is important. Besides, we already have UTC.
Daylight savings time can go die in a fire, though.

 

[Metal-Geo]

Yeah, always fun to watch fighting games tournament at 5am when you're in Europe :-/

Was it 5am when you typed this?

 

[DeathoftheEndless]

Drastically altering a fundamental aspect of life to benefit a miniscule amount of people does not strike me as a good idea.

 

[Joni]

And then wondering how late people are working in another country. Time zones made sure that when I called home from the USA I knew when my parents were up.

 

[JeffGrubb]

Sure. Let's just ignore the sun and its relevance in how we tend to do most of our labor and social functions while it's up.

That is not what this means. You would still live your life around the sun, the number indicating the sun's position would change. That's it.

Aaliyah said it best. Time ain't nothin' but a number. Rip in peace.

 

[Straight Edge]

So now when I call other parts of the US for business I have to remember if it's dawn yet instead of what time it is? No thanks.

 

[Skellig Gra]

Time to come up with another idea. All this really does is slightly improve the lives of database administrators and the like.

 

[The Albatross]

This is a terrible idea. I'm all for ditching Daylight Savings in the winter, but this idea is ridiculous, especially in an era where more people travel around the world in short spans of time than they ever have before, and there's more instant global communication. This would have made more sense 100 years ago...

But let's say a store opens "at sunrise" in Boston, which is, hypothetically, 2AM Universal Time, or something, you'd have to then remember when you go to California the next day that stores open at universal time 11PM in California (as sunrise in California would then be about 11PM). It's much, much easier to expect a store to open at 7AM (EST) in Boston and at 7AM (PST) in California. It makes visiting those places much easier because certain standards (e.g., Starbucks will always open at 5:30AM no matter where you are) are universal. THe time zones also give some frame of reference for working with people around the world. I work with people in India for my job, though maybe only a couple of times a month. I know that most people work 9-530 around the world for the most part. If I book a meeting with people from Bangalore, I won't book it past 5:00 PM Bangalore time. This becomes much more difficult for me to remember if I have to book a meeting because I don't really know what time of day they come or go.... "Oh, the People in bangalore leave work when it is 5AM Universal Time, which for me is early morning... an hour before sunrise, but for them that's evening, an hour after sunset...."

 

[Lumination]

Wishful thinking for us developers, but impractical in real life applications imo.

This is a dumb idea, imo. It is nice to our brains to know generally what time our bodies should go to sleep and what times it needs to wake up. It's an organization method. Having no timezones would make that a lot more difficult and would make the process of visiting an area outside of your normal time very hard to get used to. You'd lose track of appointments, your body would be confused at the time you go to sleep, etc. We could probably get used to it, but why?

That being said, daylight savings needs to go away. That shit is dumb and not necessary anymore.

I think you get tired because you've been active for 16hrs, not because the hour hand hit 10pm.

 

[JeffGrubb]

So now when I call other parts of the US for business I have to remember if it's dawn yet instead of what time it is? No thanks.

Yes. Because phone calls are the future of international communication and business.

 

[ISOM]

Pointless idea.

 

[close to the edge]

Nah. UTC is fantastic for storing time values (e.g. in databases) but for human consumption, time zones are very useful. Yes, they are messy and complicated, but I don't think it's realistic to go to UTC globally if we (in the EU) can't even agree to get rid of daylight savings time.

 

[Platy]

"See you tomorrow, have a nice launch break"

...nah.

Also this will fuck up deadlines OR it will work as if we had timezones anyway since people would need to know when it is bedtime to an entire country =P

 

[Joni]

That is not what this means. You would still live your life around the sun, the number indicating the sun's position would change. That's it.

Aaliyah said it best. Time ain't nothin' but a number. Rip in peace.

Just a number making it easy to tell the position of the sun.

 

[QuantumBro]

I'm fine killing DST, but do people really have trouble adding or subtracting (at most) 3 hours.

I live in PST and work with a group in CST and the time zone thing is never an issue since we're all working at the same time. The scheduling system will also autoupdate meeting or events to show it in your zone, not the zone of the person who created it.

 

[JeffGrubb]

This is a terrible idea. I'm all for ditching Daylight Savings in the winter, but this idea is ridiculous

There is no such thing as Daylight Saving Time in the winter. DST is strictly in the summer.

 

[Septimius]

This is a stupid idea.