Edit: Today I learned that UTC is an actual real thing and not just a setting I scroll past on my computer 😅.
They also complicate things.
It made more sense back before we had electric lighting and when everyone lived by the rising and setting of the sun. Now it doesn’t seem to really matter.
Obviously, the whole world deciding where to start the time would be nigh impossible but it could be like: starting at this date, on the first day of the year, what ever point is farthest away from the sun is 00:00 from henceforth.
And then people just adapted to what that meant for their particular area. Somebody’s morning might be 13:00!
Imagine if the whole world was on some global time schedule.
Edit: From my comment below
Look at the earth from a top down perspective. It’s a pie. With 12 or 24 slices depending on the granularity. A clock, basically. It would take the same amount of energy to learn which slice of earth is lined up towards the sun for each hour as would be to learn anything else in elementary school.
After which, for the rest of your life you’d have an intuitive grasp of where earth is in its rotation and what “time” it would be for any place in the world.
In the U.S. timezones were developed by the railroads before being written into law to keep the train traffic moving. I think they even called it railroad time. Back in the day when the big clock in town meant something … Imagine everyone setting 12:00 (noon) or ‘high noon’ with the sun directly overhead! There was no standard time nor timezones before we began traveling faster than the sun.
We have that. It’s called UTC.
The problem is that time zones are convenient for most people. Most of the time you are only interested in local time, not global time. It’s rare to regularly have to coordinate across multiple time zones.
It’s rare until you switch to a company with many international teams for every project.
It’s actually easier because people will bother to add timezones to everything or just reference UTC
Sure, but it only seems convenient because that’s how people have been used to thinking about things. What does it really matter if someone’s day starts at 7 am, and in a different area it starts at 12? The 12 o’clocker’s day would revolve around different numbers but ultimately would feel normal to them.
I’m not saying we should abolish time zones, only that as a thought experiment they are largely holdovers from a different time when viewed now in light of the globalization we have today.
As someone who travels quite a bit, that would be hellish.
It provides a consistent reference for information sharing. E.g. you move to a new area of the world. Assuming a 9-5 work time is a reasonable baseline. Assuming a kids bedtime is 8pm is also reasonable, etc. Without timezones, you would have to relearn all of those.
You would also be required to memorise those details for friends and relatives who live abroad. E.g. if a friend moved from the UK to new Zealand, you just need to memorise the time offset. That way it becomes easier to catch them before work, or before bed, rather than in the middle of work, or while they are asleep.
Ultimately, both in parallel is likely the best option. Local time for local events, UTC for global level events or referencing.
And now instead of need to know what time is it in California and Germany to schedule a meeting you need to know at what time people usually work in both places, because I’m pretty sure no one with an office job will be working in California at 11:00 UTC. At least now I know that if I schedule something I can just look at a single offset number to pick something that works for both sides. My real bane is DST and DST changing at different dates depending on the country.
So what problem would it solve?
Regardless of what time system is used, you’d still have to know the overlapping wake time of each party. It’s the same problem to be solved but viewed from a familiar point of reference vs a new point of reference.
And, it doesn’t really solve anything that time zones didn’t, with the exception that using UTC standardizes everything on global time. Not that that has any practical value either.
Just an interesting thought experiment. Sure does feel like I kicked the hornets nest tho. 😅
It’s still easier to search “California time” see it’s 7:18, and that if I try to call someone now I will not get an happy person on the other side, than it is to search “at what UTC time do californians usually start working”.
you’d still have to know the overlapping wake time of each party.
That’s why most of the business world is generally 8am - 6pm. Just pull up a Munich to Sao Paulo clock comparison and pick a time both of you are chained to your desks. Only the military can really operate on Zulu time because, fuck when you want to sleep, this is when it’s going down.
I don’t need to know when the Paris office is going to be awake, schedule it for 10am local.
I used to need to coordinate between +9, -10, -5, and +3… Guess who had a lot of midnight meetings.
