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We should go to global UTC. One time all the time.
It was recommended multiple times in history, the problem is that it doesn't really solve any problems, just moves the problems elsewhere:
- At some parts of the world "midnight" (the time when the day changes) will be during the "day". Would you like that you have to use a different calendar date at the morning and at the evening? It also makes much harder to check if something happened one or 2 days ago by simply checking the date, you would have to know the new UTC time as well
- You still would have to know how far they are from you to set up an international call. Some people wake up at 2:00 UTC, some wake up at 16:00 UTC. So actually nothing solved, but you have to use different numbers instead of time zone names.
- Time in China works like that, you can already see how it's going there. Full of China is one time zone, on its western border if you would cross to Afghanistan you would have to set your clock 4 and half hours backward. In Xinjiang solar noon is around 15:00 (3 pm). How people live like this? They simply use different timetables, 9-5 job is something like 11-7. So even it doesn't have a separate time zone people live like they would have a separate time zone.
- Swatch Internet Time was a well known example of this in the late 90s, you can read the general problems with it on wiki
I'm in favor of global UTC, but the first argument is a really good one that I never saw before. You're leading me to reconsider.
Another potential solution to the mess of timezones does not work, shit.
Why is it a mess? I know from a programmer's point of view it is, I've seen the Tom Scott video a lot of times, but for average people it doesn't really matter.
Update to the video: they decided that they won't add a new leap second at least until 2035, and there are plans to switch to leap minutes instead, and sync to the astronomical clock once every century only.
Where it matters, e.g. international flight, they already use UTC for everything. How they solve this problem behind the scenes shouldn't affect the everyday lives of people. Computers use binary but we still use decimal system and noone want to change the numbering system. In a lot of places people use 12 hour clock in speech, but 24 hour in written form, and noone has problem with that. I don't understand why we should change it just because of the laziness of some programmers.
Plus you lose all of the cross-cultural understanding that's currently built into the time. The concept of what the number on the clock is and how that relates to the actual time of day has dozens if not hundreds of tiny bits of additional understanding baked into it depending on the situation.
In order to communicate these ideas, people would start referring to their local offset instead of the UTC and then we're just back at time zones again.
IMO people would figure it out and life would go on. Yes, lots of people would have the calendar date advance in the middle of the day but that's fine, we'd get used to it. People wouldn't work 9-5 jobs, but we'd come up with different terminology.
I don't really see the argument about people waking up at different times. Yeah, some people would wake up at 02:00 and some at 16:00, but when someone says they wake up at 02:00, there's 0 confusion about when that is. You'd have to know when someone is awake to do an international call, but you have to do that anyways.
IMO people would figure it out and life would go on.
This whole thread is about how it can be solved or not. Also they would oppose such a change, and we are speaking about millions of people. Would you tell them: "Oh, this system is terrible for you but a bit more convenient for us, so we will change, and you will figure it out"
One way to solve it that they use a different point for day change, but we are back to the root again, as at some points on the planet they will have a different date, or we can call it a different time zone....
I don’t really see the argument about people waking up at different times.
The point is that you get the same problem as with the current system, and abolishing the time zones won't solve issues like that. People will still live according to their solar day, and if you want to call someone on the other side of globe you still have to look up when are their working hour, aka their "time zone"... So abolishment of time zones were not successful, they are just called differently...
But then we would need some method to quickly discern the relative position in the day/night cycle of a locality, perhaps some form of number to indicate the percentage of a day before or after midnight their local area is at. Then probably just add that offset so that the viewer doesn't need to do the math everytime.
The only reason why you need to do math is because you're not used to it. Once you're used to it you can just apply your local offset if you absolutely need to but otherwise you would just wake up when it's time to wake up and your UTC and you'd go to bed when it's time to go to bed in your UTC.
So timezones.
The difference is that you're not changing how time is kept. Countries can change their timezone offsets right now to screwy things like +12:45 and it changes how time is recorded and stored. If we switch to UTC, a country can just declare their official hours are shifting and nobody has to fundamentally change how clocks work.
At what time the date changes from Wednesday to Thursday? At 0:00 UTC? Ask someone in Hawaii if they would like to use different day at the morning than at the evening. "I will call you tomorrow" does it mean today afternoon, or tomorrow morning? etc.
"i will call you tomorrow" already does not define a time period. And nothing is stopping Noon from being a local time, its just that your noon in Hawaii would be UTC -10. So saying I will call you tomorrow afternoon still means I am calling in the later half of the day even in global UTC. You are just defining it with a local reference.
Currently if I want to call someone in Japan, or Australia I already cant say I will call you tomorrow afternoon, because its already tomorrow when I get up.
Currently if I want to call someone in Japan, or Australia I already cant say I will call you tomorrow afternoon, because its already tomorrow when I get up.
Yes, but these kind of long distance calls affect only a handful of people. A best before date on a food packaging or a lot of other situations where only the day is given from a date would become more complex for a lot of places, and they would affect the life of far more people.
Yes, that is the case for being in your own timezone, but what if you are dealing with someone in another country, you will need some way to know quickly what their local dayurnal situation is. Or if you are travelling, the jet lag will be compounded by confusion.
actually its easier because you just apply the UTC offset, and that is assuming its a cold call. If your setting up a call via email or chat or something like that you just say what time do you want to talk tomorrow. I work from UTC 13:00-21:00, and I see that you work UTC 07:00-15:00. How about we have our call at UTC 14:00?
doing this type of international communication gets simpler because now you dont need to convert into a local reference on both sides. Since you both work in UTC you have a standard reference and all the conversion is unnecessary.
Timezones are literally enums for UTC+offset. lambdas maybe.
But you're both doing a conversion in this case also? You're both mentally converting the UTC time into your local idea of what part of the day that is.
With time zones you don't do that mental conversion because that part is the same, you do a different conversion for the offset.
There's a conversion with either system.
That's kind of a mess even now, lots of logistical concerns, but with all the technological infrastructure we have, we could kind of do the opposite... Have watches and clocks that are always synced exactly with the day/night cycle no matter where you are. It changes a tremendous amount about how we do so many things, but it's an interesting idea.
I kinda think it might make sense to normalize using both, but at that point it feels like we may be making things worse.
I'm pretty meh on the arguments there. It would be different, but we'd adapt. And we'd fix a lot bunch of problems.
I'm onboard with this!
I think the author of this just hates Uncle Steve. If you cared about your uncle in Australia you'd know when it's best to call them.
I keep arguing for this but everybody thinks I'm crazy. They say stupid stuff like but what time would school start kids would be getting up at 8:00 a.m. and it could be the middle of the night.