Cool, so sunrise is at 8 PM now. Or maybe there’s just no consistent relationship between what a clock on the East and West coast of America say, and a call can’t be scheduled between them.
The real problem with time and date is that it has to fit social and natural systems as well as actual passage of time. A lot of nuance is unavoidable.
Yeah, tbh the “no timezones” approach comes with its own basket of problems that isn’t necessarily better than the “with timezones” basket. The system needed to find a balance between being useful locally, but intelligible across regions. Especially challenging before ubiquitous telecommunications
Imagine having to rethink the social norms around time every time you travel or meet someone from far away. They say “Oh I work a 9-to-5 office job” and then you need to figure out where they live to understand what that means. Or a doctor writes a book where they recommend that you get to bed by 2:00PM every night, and then you need to figure out how to translate that to a time that makes sense for you.
We’d invent and use informal timezones anyway, and then we’d be writing Javascript functions to translate “real” times to “colloquial” times, and that’s pretty close to just storing datetimes in UTC then translating them to a relevant timezone ad hoc, which is what we’re already doing.
That’s what my rational programmer brain says. My emotional programmer brain is exactly this meme.
My emotional brain thinks we should just give up and climb back into the trees.
Funny enough, a story just broke about a lunar timezone, which would lose a second or so every year relative to Earth due to relativity. If space travel becomes a big thing we’re going to have to choose a frame of reference, and probably just go with Unix epoch in that frame as the universal time. Hopefully it doesn’t happen to pass through a black hole, because there’s no consistent way to define a frame of reference that’s not subject to gravity.
Or maybe there’s just no consistent relationship between what a clock on the East and West coast of America say, and a call can’t be scheduled between them.
If you get rid of timezones they all say the same time, no? If you want to schedule a call you just say the time and save the timzone offset fiddling.
The real problem with time and date is that it has to fit social and natural systems as well as actual passage of time.
Can you give any more concrete examples? None come to mind beyond habit, which is not an immutable thing.
Subjective. It seems like it would be a bit confusing, though, if you had to relearn times whenever you travel somewhere (edit: and dates could flip over in the middle of a work day). But maybe you’d prefer that.
If you get rid of timezones they all say the same time, no?
Before they were invented, it was literally just anarchy. People set it to match people they knew. That’s what I was thinking of, but it could also just be one place where noon is at 12:00 PM.
Can you give any more concrete examples? None come to mind beyond habit, which is not an immutable thing.
Well, there’s not a round number of second in a day, or days in a year, for example, since they’re all naturally occurring and arbitrary. And then the Earth turns at a subtly non-constant rate, and people have settled on a seven day week. If you do have timezones, it doesn’t make sense to be inflexible with them when they run up against geography or trade and cultural ties, so they’ll be curvy, and geopolitics will itself change over decades and someone will want to change which one they’re in. All of this is a headache if you just want to do a calendar calculation.
It seems like it would be a bit confusing, though, if you had to relearn times whenever you travel somewhere (edit: and dates could flip over in the middle of a work day). But maybe you’d prefer that.
I’d prefer that over having to change clocks when you travel, and having to have knowledge about the location and possibly having to flip the date when you encounter a reference to a specific time, yes.
Before they were invented, it was literally just anarchy. People set it to match people they knew. That’s what I was thinking of, but it could also just be one place where noon is at 12:00 PM.
Yes, you would obviously do the latter. No sense it going back to the bad old days.
Well, there’s not a round number of second in a day, or days in a year, for example, since they’re all naturally occurring and arbitrary.
Days in a year ok (except leap years). But seconds in a day are round (discounting days with leap seconds). 24 * 60 * 60 = 86400, which is divisible by two. Did you mean they are not based on the decimal system? I’d be up for a decimal based time system and a reorganised calendar, but that wasn’t the topic of discussion here.
And then the Earth turns at a subtly non-constant rate, and people have settled on a seven day week.
Yeah but none of that has much impact on the timezone debate.
If you do have timezones, it doesn’t make sense to be inflexible with them when they run up against geography or trade and cultural ties, so they’ll be curvy, and geopolitics will itself change over decades and someone will want to change which one they’re in.
Fair enough. I acknowledged this point in my other post, that there are historical reasons for timezones mostly rooted in administrative requirements. But I don’t think this is a good reason to not adopt a better system per se.
All of this is a headache if you just want to do a calendar calculation.
Exactly! So out with the old, in with the new. Sure this will create some other headaches, especially given how deeply rooted some of the relevant nomenclature is in most languages, but the sooner we change this the less it will hurt. I see that it might be a non-starter given the inertia and disunity of globalised society working against it, but it still seems desirable nonetheless, to me at least.
Days in a year ok (except leap years). But seconds in a day are round (discounting days with leap seconds). 24 * 60 * 60 = 86400, which is divisible by two. Did you mean they are not based on the decimal system? I’d be up for a decimal based time system and a reorganised calendar, but that wasn’t the topic of discussion here.
Oops, I thought seconds were defined by the meter at some point. Nope, a pendulum 1/40000 of the distance from the pole to the equator just happens to measure the second near-perfectly, but the second stayed defined by astronomical motions until the atomic standard. Still, do to said variability of the Earth’s rotation since then it’s 86400.002, so even if it stopped changing we’d need leap seconds.
The point being that even if you get rid of timezones the calendar will still suck to work with. I question whether we should even have fixed days, months and years, if the time doesn’t relate to the position of the sun in the sky. You might as well just go with Unix epoch, and leave days to be informal. Of course, then you’d have to calculate multiples of 86400 a lot to set appointments. Maybe we need a new decimal second as well.
Cool, so sunrise is at 8 PM now. Or maybe there’s just no consistent relationship between what a clock on the East and West coast of America say, and a call can’t be scheduled between them.
The real problem with time and date is that it has to fit social and natural systems as well as actual passage of time. A lot of nuance is unavoidable.
Yeah, tbh the “no timezones” approach comes with its own basket of problems that isn’t necessarily better than the “with timezones” basket. The system needed to find a balance between being useful locally, but intelligible across regions. Especially challenging before ubiquitous telecommunications
Imagine having to rethink the social norms around time every time you travel or meet someone from far away. They say “Oh I work a 9-to-5 office job” and then you need to figure out where they live to understand what that means. Or a doctor writes a book where they recommend that you get to bed by 2:00PM every night, and then you need to figure out how to translate that to a time that makes sense for you.
We’d invent and use informal timezones anyway, and then we’d be writing Javascript functions to translate “real” times to “colloquial” times, and that’s pretty close to just storing datetimes in UTC then translating them to a relevant timezone ad hoc, which is what we’re already doing.
That’s what my rational programmer brain says. My emotional programmer brain is exactly this meme.
My emotional brain thinks we should just give up and climb back into the trees.
Funny enough, a story just broke about a lunar timezone, which would lose a second or so every year relative to Earth due to relativity. If space travel becomes a big thing we’re going to have to choose a frame of reference, and probably just go with Unix epoch in that frame as the universal time. Hopefully it doesn’t happen to pass through a black hole, because there’s no consistent way to define a frame of reference that’s not subject to gravity.
And the problem with that is… ?
If you get rid of timezones they all say the same time, no? If you want to schedule a call you just say the time and save the timzone offset fiddling.
Can you give any more concrete examples? None come to mind beyond habit, which is not an immutable thing.
Subjective. It seems like it would be a bit confusing, though, if you had to relearn times whenever you travel somewhere (edit: and dates could flip over in the middle of a work day). But maybe you’d prefer that.
Before they were invented, it was literally just anarchy. People set it to match people they knew. That’s what I was thinking of, but it could also just be one place where noon is at 12:00 PM.
Well, there’s not a round number of second in a day, or days in a year, for example, since they’re all naturally occurring and arbitrary. And then the Earth turns at a subtly non-constant rate, and people have settled on a seven day week. If you do have timezones, it doesn’t make sense to be inflexible with them when they run up against geography or trade and cultural ties, so they’ll be curvy, and geopolitics will itself change over decades and someone will want to change which one they’re in. All of this is a headache if you just want to do a calendar calculation.
I’d prefer that over having to change clocks when you travel, and having to have knowledge about the location and possibly having to flip the date when you encounter a reference to a specific time, yes.
Yes, you would obviously do the latter. No sense it going back to the bad old days.
Days in a year ok (except leap years). But seconds in a day are round (discounting days with leap seconds). 24 * 60 * 60 = 86400, which is divisible by two. Did you mean they are not based on the decimal system? I’d be up for a decimal based time system and a reorganised calendar, but that wasn’t the topic of discussion here.
Yeah but none of that has much impact on the timezone debate.
Fair enough. I acknowledged this point in my other post, that there are historical reasons for timezones mostly rooted in administrative requirements. But I don’t think this is a good reason to not adopt a better system per se.
Exactly! So out with the old, in with the new. Sure this will create some other headaches, especially given how deeply rooted some of the relevant nomenclature is in most languages, but the sooner we change this the less it will hurt. I see that it might be a non-starter given the inertia and disunity of globalised society working against it, but it still seems desirable nonetheless, to me at least.
Oops, I thought seconds were defined by the meter at some point. Nope, a pendulum 1/40000 of the distance from the pole to the equator just happens to measure the second near-perfectly, but the second stayed defined by astronomical motions until the atomic standard. Still, do to said variability of the Earth’s rotation since then it’s 86400.002, so even if it stopped changing we’d need leap seconds.
The point being that even if you get rid of timezones the calendar will still suck to work with. I question whether we should even have fixed days, months and years, if the time doesn’t relate to the position of the sun in the sky. You might as well just go with Unix epoch, and leave days to be informal. Of course, then you’d have to calculate multiples of 86400 a lot to set appointments. Maybe we need a new decimal second as well.