Fulminator
Member
please, yes, this would be ideal
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Time to Dump Time Zones (NYT Op-ed)
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I'm all for ditching Day Light Savings Time and switching to a 24 hr clock, but getting rid of time zones would be a hard sell. Evening, Morning, and Afternoon hours would be drastically different time ranges for each zone. I'd be starting work at 2 pm instead of 8 am. Show coordination would be weird. Instead of telling everyone the show starts at 8 in your time zone it could start at 8 on the East Coast, 9 for Central, and 10 for the Pacific. Hard to keep that all straight.
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
This is a disastrous idea that could not work within the next century, if ever.
For starters, it would just wreak havoc with everything. School days and work days would stretch over multiple days in large parts of the world (everywhere outside of Europe/Africa is they used UTC as the baseline for this). That would wreak havoc with bookkeeping, not to mention it could interact with a variety of laws. What about laws mandating places/services be open on certain days, or during certain hours? Would banks need to close right at midnight when a day changed over to a national holiday, even if it was the middle of the afternoon? There would probably be thousands upon thousands of laws that would need to be rewritten or chucked out entirely, and that's not something that can be done easily.
Not only t hat, it would be a net inconvenience when traveling. Yes, it would make arranging conference calls much easier, and simplify travel plans, but if you were staying in a different time zone (or what we call a time zone now), you would be quite confused. Right now, if you're visiting somewhere, you can understand what time of day it is pretty easily. Travel somewhere and you have a meeting at noon? Well, that means around lunchtime. 6 PM? That's dinner time. Etc. With no time zones you'd need to constantly be looking up or asking someone what a specific time means. If a place says it closes at 1700 does that mean it's just after dinner time, or late at night?
For starters, it would just wreak havoc with everything. School days and work days would stretch over multiple days in large parts of the world (everywhere outside of Europe/Africa is they used UTC as the baseline for this). That would wreak havoc with bookkeeping, not to mention it could interact with a variety of laws. What about laws mandating places/services be open on certain days, or during certain hours? Would banks need to close right at midnight when a day changed over to a national holiday, even if it was the middle of the afternoon? There would probably be thousands upon thousands of laws that would need to be rewritten or chucked out entirely, and that's not something that can be done easily.
Not only t hat, it would be a net inconvenience when traveling. Yes, it would make arranging conference calls much easier, and simplify travel plans, but if you were staying in a different time zone (or what we call a time zone now), you would be quite confused. Right now, if you're visiting somewhere, you can understand what time of day it is pretty easily. Travel somewhere and you have a meeting at noon? Well, that means around lunchtime. 6 PM? That's dinner time. Etc. With no time zones you'd need to constantly be looking up or asking someone what a specific time means. If a place says it closes at 1700 does that mean it's just after dinner time, or late at night?
Fried Food
Banned
Art Bell is redeemed
There aren't a million different time zones.
There's 24* different time zones.
Because there's 24 hours in a day.
Novel, isn't it?
(*25 time zones, because Newfoundland has to be weird and off by half an hour.)
Fulminator
Member
the point is that it would be the same time everywhere, regardless of the position of the sun in your location
gutter_trash
Banned
we live by the Sun,
noon is supposed to be the highest point of the Sun, that is all
noon is supposed to be the highest point of the Sun, that is all
FunkyDealer
Banned
If anything, it'll fragment the globe into even more sections.
It sounds like change for the sake of change.
The only difficult part of timezones is how they've got alternative names, without the relation to GMT mentioned. And these can be a challenge to remember.
It sounds like change for the sake of change.
The only difficult part of timezones is how they've got alternative names, without the relation to GMT mentioned. And these can be a challenge to remember.
StickSoldier
Member
When I made that thread about getting rid of Time, I didn't mean it!
No it wouldn't.
An "8pm" show would be at 15:00 in New York and 18:00 in Los Angeles.
Uhmm yeah. I get that. But a TV network isnt going to want to air a show when people won't be able to watch it.
Say they want to air a show in prime time. Prime Time is the peak times people watch tv its around 9pm for every time zone across the country.
Now if we are all using the the same time that means Prime Time is now 4am for some people 3am for others or 1am for others depending on where they live. you get it?
LostCaress
Member
It would make some schedules unambiguous, specially if it concerns people from different time zones. So a live (broadcast to the whole world) football match starts at 13h00, it starts at 13h00 for everyone. Obviously for some of the world it will be during night, but you can print the time of the match as 13h00. Also if you want to schedule a meeting, you say 15h00 and it's clear for everyone. Now, you can solve this easily now by simply saying the match will start at 13h00 GMT, or the meeting will be at 15h00 GMT. It wouldn't solve any other problem.
Its fine and dandy for live TV. Too bad most TV programs aren't live. For those shows it would be a giant mess to advertise for.
Have you ever used time before? There are a thousand reasons for time zones.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
As someone who works with international teams no, I don't actually want this. Right now I know off the top of my head that Shanghai is 12+2 hours ahead of me, if I need to send a quick message or bug someone for an update I can rapidly say "oh its only 7am over there, I shouldn't expect a response until people get into the office"
Moving away from time zones seems like it makes it harder for me to make such on the fly estimations. If its 1600 here and also 1600 there, I have no instant frame of reference for what time of the workday 1600 in Shanghai actually is
Moving away from time zones seems like it makes it harder for me to make such on the fly estimations. If its 1600 here and also 1600 there, I have no instant frame of reference for what time of the workday 1600 in Shanghai actually is
LostCaress
Member
It would be really easy - Seinfeld now at 21h00 in "list of cities", 22h00 in "other list of cities" and 23h00 "yet another list of cities". Maybe you could even group these cities, towns and places according to their longitude. Maybe call them Longitude Zones?
So time zones with a different name?
I believe that's the joke.
And yeah, this sounds dumb. Figuring out what time it is in another part of the world is trivial with computers now, and this doesn't actually make collaborating with someone on the other side of the world any easier, it just fucks with any sense of local time if you travel.
Nothing is stopping people from using GMT if they need it.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
That'sthejoke
Fulminator
Member
ah yeah, i understand, i wasn't thinking about it from that perspective
It's very Silicon Valley, baby. Disrupt the time zones!
Fulminator
Member
yeah im on board with this
pelicansurf
Needs a Holiday on Gallifrey
I actually hate daylight savings, because it is dark as hell at 5pm now. Let it be dark in the AM not the PM when you're getting off work. That's a reason winter is so depressing.
Utter nonsense. Going to a universal time would do nothing but complicate things for no goddamn reason. Let's say I need to talk to someone in Moscow during business hours there. What time is it in Moscow? It's 2PM. Okay, I have three hours before closing time, I know instantly what the situation is. Under universal time maybe that becomes 7PM. Where is the sun at 7PM in Moscow? What time does the business close there? I have to either know that off the top of my head or look it up, because knowing the current time gives me no useful information. This is the same around the globe, in that you need to memorize normal working hours for every single country you need to deal with.
This simplifies nothing for anyone except database techs. It's an incredibly stupid idea.
Your sleep schedule would still have to change. Nobody's going to start working in the middle of the night because the hour numbers change. If work starts at 9AM in New York it would simply start at 10AM in Ohio.
Or we can stick with what's already normal and not be worse off for it.
Time zones weren't conjured up out of nowhere because people thought "wouldn't it be swell if..." and everyone just sorta agreed, they were developed gradually in the period when mechanical clockkeeping became a widespread thing to solve a problem.
That's the crux of the whole matter. What problem are we trying to solve here?
Typical internet conversation afterwards:
"Oh man, I was up until 14:00 last night and I'm exhausted."
"What are you talking about? 14:00 is the middle of the afternoon."
Doing away with timezones doesn't make dealing with people on the other side of the globe any less complicated. It's easy enough to convert timezones with a quick google search as is. If they were saying we should be converting to metric units, or getting rid of daylight savings I would be on board but this doesn't make sense to me.
Riposte
Member
The instant access to information makes timezones a non-concern. You can put the digital version of those news clocks on your phone, tablet, or computer (or rock a bunch of post-it notes). Meanwhile, if you were worried about contacting someone while they are asleep or working, getting rid of timezones not only doesn't make this easier to avoid, it actually makes it harder, because it's noon everywhere, as opposed to 4am there or 6pm over there.
Rygar 8 Bit
Jaguar 64-bit
baffled how people in this thread think that by going by this time system somehow they sun and moon would be up for everyone at the same time
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
LOL! Some folks here are expecting timezone fix where the whole world follows their time relative to the sun. You're all not the center of the damn universe so let it be.
Timezones work and they make sense. Too lazy to figure it out that it's 4pm in Seattle and 7pm in New York? Tough shit, you probably will face this issue maybe 10 times in your lifetime. Those that face it more will know the time and their timezones.
If all else fails, just follow the Greenwich mean time and act all hipster. Or... You know... Google it! Use your phone to figure out time. Use apps. Use people. Ask someone. What the fuck.
Timezone is only an issue in countries with border issues like Russia, where come cities or region have may completely different time zone because of the man-made borders. I'm sure the thousand or so of people living in those regions are accustomed to it.
Atomic Playboy
Member
Ummm... you hate standard time. Daylight Savings is when we set clocks forward an hour to get an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day rather than the sun coming up at 3 in the morning. And there's not much Daylight Savings could do about how little sun we get during the winter; that's a function of the tilt of the Earth, and in order for it to be light outside until 6 PM, we'd have to set the clocks forward 2 hours in the darkest weeks of winter, so the sun wouldn't rise until around 10 am. There's just not that much daylight to work with some weeks. But on the plus side, that same tilt gives us seasons and helps with the crop cycle, so that's something.
yongeandcollege
Member
Bad idea
darkazcura
Member
I feel like this a terrible idea. Time zones give a general sense of what other locations are doing. Like if I am in MA, and it is 530 PM, I know not to call a friend on the west coast to catch up because they are likely at work at 230 PM. Obviously if timing became the same across the board, I would have a general sense that the west coast is three hours behind so I would know not to call, but decades down the road, communication between two areas of the world would become needlessly complicated. Making the time same everywhere would be really confusing because we would have to remember different timings and schedules for different areas rather than understanding, oh it's noon there, they are at lunch time. It's easier to just deal with time zones.
Masked Man
I said wow
I think time zones are fine the way they are, but I'm all for the removal of Daylight Savings Time.
Chet Rippo
Member
We should go back to how it was before time zones and just have every town have their own local time.
OnimaruXLR
Member
This doesn't really strike me as having enough of a benefit for everyone else to justify doing it for software engineers and international travelers/businessfolk.
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