Time to Dump Time Zones

[Lynarii]

That way of thinking doesn't make sense. If we had universal time it would be way easier:
- Office Worker working 9am-5pm UTC has to contact someone in Sydney, Australia.
- It's currently 2pm UTC.
- Working hours for Sydney are 11pm-7am (-10 from UTC working hours).
- The worker looks at clock and realizes that there is nobody working at the moment in the Sydney.
- Schedules the call for the time you know someone will be at the office - without doing any unnecessary calculations



Although I'm up for the Universal World Time idea I don't see that happening. Best thing we could hope for now is dual time - local time as it is(minus daylight saving adjustment) and universal time for anything that matter outside local scope. We basically have system very close to this, except for the standardised universal time zone that everybody knows how to calculate their local time to.

Except the problem is that the office worker still needs to know the offset for Sydney. Either way you're still memorizing offsets, it's simply a question of what you want to call them. As long as people around the world have schedules that are offset from each other, there will be a need to know what those offsets are. The time zone system is simply a method by which various areas can declare what the offset they want to work under is. It doesn't matter if the lines are clean on a map. I could have an island in the middle of the pacific, and declare it part of the GMT time zone, and as long as the businesses on that island are generally open from 9 to 5 on the time zone I've chosen (maybe a bunch of serious night owls?) then the system is working fine.

[Tradu]

I'd rather be able to do stuff during the day and sleep at night thanks. My routine shouldn't be disturbed because some people up top decided that the world should start following one clock.

Day and night don't have to be at the same time everywhere. You'd still go to bed at the same "lightness" outside, the only difference would be that your clock had a different number on it.

[Zindai]

Where I live I think Daylight saving system should be a thing. In summer, sunrise is at almost 5 am, while work hours start at about 8 am. It's very very hot in the afternoon, leaving an hour earlier is a very good thing.

Regarding time zone, it's important because it help everyone find if it's night or morning in a country fast!

That could just as easily be handled by working earlier in the summer depending on your type of job. It's already quite common with flexible work times here if you don't work shifts (restaurants, hospitals, etc.).

I'm not saying that getting rid of DST would be the beginning of a golden era, but sometimes you have to question the systems that are in place and if they are even worth the hassle. That's what the guy did with time zones, but with that it's a lot more work convincing everyone to use the same than it is to simply ignore the next DST change.

[TwoNineMarine]

Daylights savings is dumb.

I love my dark early nights ):

I'm indifferent towards time zones though.

[ItachiZaku]

I'm pretty ok with it.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Getting rid of time zones might just be the dumbest idea I've seen in a long time.

[zenkai]

Daylight savings, sure. Time Zones? No. That's just stupid.

Quoted for Truth.

[yetgdhfgh]

How would air travel be managed without time zones? I mean back in the 19th century the USA had to be broken up into time zones so trains wouldnt crash into each other time wasnt standardised

[Delaios]

Still doesn't solve the issue of jet lag.

What issues would a global time even solve? Timezones would just be replaced by something else. Doesn't really help anyone if it's 2 pm everywhere, but you have no clue if that means it's early morning, midday or late in the evening.
The only thing a global time would cause is a lot of expenses for everything to adjust as well as a lot of confusion for the majority of the earth's population. Sure, if everyone on earth would agree to this it would work. But that's on the same level of wishful thinking as solving most traffic jams by having everyone drive at the same speed.

[Mormolyce]

I'd rather be able to do stuff during the day and sleep at night thanks. My routine shouldn't be disturbed because some people up top decided that the world should start following one clock.

Why wouldn't you just do everything at the same time as right now, but state the GMT instead of local time? Ie, instead of the clock saying 7:00AM when you get up, it shows 7:00 - time zone.

And you'd just adjust.

[Daelak]

Why not? Current time measurement is really just a mostly arbitrary number, people will still do stuff during the day and sleep at night regardless of what the number on the clock is. Would take awhile for people to get used to though.

This would be so awesome, just one time zone would make scheduling global events and local events with great ease.

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What issues would a global time even solve? Timezones would just be replaced by something else. Doesn't really help anyone if it's 2 pm everywhere, but you have no clue if that means it's early morning, midday or late in the evening.
The only thing a global time would cause is a lot of expenses for everything to adjust as well as a lot of confusion for the majority of the earth's population. Sure, if everyone on earth would agree to this it would work. But that's on the same level of wishful thinking as solving most traffic jams by having everyone drive at the same speed.

The sun is the only thing your biological/circadian rhythm uses anyways.

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How would air travel be managed without time zones? I mean back in the 19th century the USA had to be broken up into time zones so trains wouldnt crash into each other time wasnt standardised

They use UTC (Zulu) already. One time zone.

[Deleted]

Except the problem is that the office worker still needs to know the offset for Sydney. Either way you're still memorizing offsets, it's simply a question of what you want to call them. As long as people around the world have schedules that are offset from each other, there will be a need to know what those offsets are. The time zone system is simply a method by which various areas can declare what the offset they want to work under is. It doesn't matter if the lines are clean on a map. I could have an island in the middle of the pacific, and declare it part of the GMT time zone, and as long as the businesses on that island are generally open from 9 to 5 on the time zone I've chosen (maybe a bunch of serious night owls?) then the system is working fine.

Well not exactly. As is now you need to know both office hours and the offset to calculate if it is right time to call or not. With unified master time you'd need only to know office hours - which would likely be easily accessible thanks to internets. There is bunch of scenarios where unified time would make many things easier, but I can see it causing issues as well. Although imo issues with unified time would be greatly outweighed by pros of such system I can't see world using it. Hence system with two equal times(equal importance not value ofc) would be best. For day to day use the timezoned one and for anything that could cross borders standardised time.

[Deleted]

Guy says we should not only get rid of daylight savings, we should get ride of time zones too.

There's a great novel where the Overlord AI changes the hour to 80 minutes just to make things confusing for humans while it's planning the final takeover.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..._A_Space_Opera

Have fun!

[Shakadam]

I don't understand why people get so annoyed at daylight saving time, I don't even noticed it and all my clocks change themselves.

How damn rigid and stiff is your life if you can't even flex your sleep schedule 1 hour forwards or backwards? People work 3-shift jobs for years without issue and personally I basically never go to sleep the same time 2 days in a row.

Like really, what a non-issue this is.

[Deleted]

Time is just a number i would too like a single planet time. Would be good in a long run IMO.

[Alfador]

That way of thinking doesn't make sense. If we had universal time it would be way easier:
- Office Worker working 9am-5pm UTC has to contact someone in Sydney, Australia.
- It's currently 2pm UTC.
- Working hours for Sydney are 11pm-7am (-10 from UTC working hours).
- The worker looks at clock and realizes that there is nobody working at the moment in the Sydney.
- Schedules the call for the time you know someone will be at the office - without doing any unnecessary calculations



Although I'm up for the Universal World Time idea I don't see that happening. Best thing we could hope for now is dual time - local time as it is(minus daylight saving adjustment) and universal time for anything that matter outside local scope. We basically have system very close to this, except for the standardised universal time zone that everybody knows how to calculate their local time to.

I do what you described on a daily basis. I work in Eastern US time, and every day I have to talk to people in Mountain time, GMT, Central European Time, and occasionally Tokyo time.

It is far far easier to just know an offset and rely on the fact that 9-5 is pretty much a global standard than it is to remember 5 different start and stop times.

The good news is that if anyone tried to implement an idea this ridiculous most people would probably just straight up ignore it.

[Sliske]

That would confuse people not alleviate confusion.

What is more confusing - having to google "GMT to PDT" maybe once a year for Blizzcon or a game launch OR having to get used to 'mid day' meaning 5am in one city, 9 am in another city, 7pm in another city.

The entire world works on time zones and business days. You throw that up in the air, the world grinds to a halt.

At the MOST they could rename the time zones to stuff thats more relevant to the average person. BST (British Summer Time) is something everyone in the UK and Ireland can understand for example. If you're in either of those two countries, you know your time zone immediately.

But for the most part, for larger countries like the USA, there isn't one time zone, theres multiple. For these they should simply refer to them by State or city.

But really i'm actively putting myself into the shoes of a moron to try and find a problem here.

[Danner]

Guy says we should not only get rid of daylight savings, we should get ride of time zones too.

As much as I wholeheartedly agree with the idea to standardize time, know that this is going to be literally impossible to achieve. Reason: people suck at accepting change. Also, there is a financial incentive to resist changes.

Did you know that not many hundred years ago, an hour was of unequal length? After all, sunrise was defined as 6am, sunset as 6pm, and noon as 12am. Easy for the common person to relate to, but watchmakers literally didn't exist due to the impossibility of creating machinery which auto-adjusted itself based on the solar year cycle. I mean, imagine how this works north of the polar circle in a world of midnight sun?

If you want a global time - and I welcome the idea - it's very simple.
Add a global time display to everyone's Windows OS status bar time widget. Make sure Outlook follows it. Then wait 3 generations so that everyone who thinks this is the worst thing ever dies of old age. Mission accomplished.

It's also not gonna happen. Because people suck at accepting change, and microsoft would be the first victim in the upcoming world war caused by this change.

[Deleted]

Having time zones makes a lot of sense from a user perspective. When i say that i sleep from 04:00 to 09:30 you perfectly understand what i mean. When i say that is sleep from 02:00 - 07:30 you still get some sense of the meaning conveyed as the offset is only 2h. When i say that i sleep from 14:00 - 19:30 all you get is the duration. You don't get any sort of info about what that actually means in terms of "is there daylight outside?". Trying to get rid of that just because some people can't get their head around timezones is asinine to say the least.

[Donald Hellscream]

I approve of this.

We should also adopt one language, one currency, one flag and one head of state. Naturally as you will all be adopting Greenwich Mean Time, we may as well keep it uniform and adopt English, pound sterling, Union Jack and Her Maj QE2.

So basicly The British Empire but spanning the entirety of the world? :P