Timeline for What would an Earth with no timezones be like?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 4 at 7:09 | comment | added | Nolan Amy | @Jay You don't ask them; you look it up. You know their location. On your calendar you see "San Francisco 🌞 14:37-01:08". People tell you their general working hours "Oh, I'm usually at my desk by 17:00, with my family from 01:00-05:00, and sometimes take late calls between 05:00 and 06:30". Slack warns you "Heads up! It's after midnight for Alice." | |
| Oct 17, 2020 at 17:02 | comment | added | StephenS | Note that aviation does use UTC. We just convert to/from local time when talking with the general public. Most computers also work in UTC internally and with each other but convert to/from local time for humans users. | |
| Mar 25, 2020 at 14:33 | comment | added | Jay | @The_Sympathizer But when do you ask them? I really wouldn't want someone to call me at 2:00 in the morning to ask, "What would be a good time for you to have a business call today?" | |
| Nov 7, 2018 at 8:01 | comment | added | The_Sympathizer | Insofar as needing to know when someone is available elsewhere, there is now a very simple solution: you ask them. No math/google required. You will know, when they say it, immediately how that relates to your own day, and vice versa for them. | |
| Jan 18, 2016 at 21:06 | comment | added | BlueWizard | I dont think that we need years to adapt to UTC time. I dont think that adapting to UTC will be any worse than adapting back and forth from daylight saving time. I say gove it two weeks and everyone is back to sync. You dont need to change any habit of yours ir anything. You just need ro shift your thinking a little bit and populations already dealt with let's say currency changes wich also require little shift of thinking | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 12:18 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | @Oldcat: Apparently, some think only 30 minutes are acceptable. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 19:09 | comment | added | Jay | @molot Trains don't cross time zones as quickly, but they still cross them regularly, and it only takes a train crossing a time zone once in it's travel to create a potential for confusion. And airlines certainly do discuss schedules in local time: visit any airline website or look at the arrival and departure board at the airport and to the best of my knowledge they are always expressed in local time. Airline agents talking to customers give times in local time. Maybe in purely internal conversations they use UTC, so there might be LESS change, but not NONE. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 18:46 | comment | added | Mołot | "the train leaves at 2:00 pm" - plane might be a better example, trains don't cross time zones so often or so fast. Also, airlines already work by UTC, so no real change for them anyway. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 7:25 | comment | added | Matthieu M. | I would like to point out that schedules vary across countries, and sometimes even firms/individuals. As a French, I'm always surprised when watching American movies because they get up much earlier than I do and, on the other hand, eat dinner much sooner, with regard to their local time. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 0:07 | comment | added | Oldcat | Before timezones, every town would set its clocks to local noon, so everyones time was exact to the sun and unknowable to everyone else. Today we figure 1 hour of slop in solar noon to clock noon is acceptable. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 0:06 | comment | added | Oldcat | If you have a worldwide universal clock, you are more or less saying that "what the position of the sun at place X now" is way less important than "when does this worldwide event happen in absolute terms" and your measures fit that. So if you want to know if people will be asleep, then the current measures are better. If you want to know when to log into Youtube for a LiveStream in Thailand, the Zulu time would be much easier, as you can look at its time and compare it to your zulu clock on the wall. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 22:45 | comment | added | Jay | @Oldcat Yes, you could say, "for them noon (i.e. sun at its highest point) is at 1400 hours". But my point is, today if someone from a faraway place says "this happened at 6:00 pm", I have a good idea where that fit in their daily cycle. If there were no time zones and someone said it happened at 6:00 pm (or 1800 hours), even knowing that noon for them is 3:00 am, I have to do some arithmetic in my head. Mind-boggling complex math? No. But an extra nuisance. More or less nuisance than time zones? Hard to say. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 22:42 | comment | added | Jay | @oldcat Well, okay, maybe we'd use a 24 hour clock, which I think would simplify things all around anyway. But that's a different issue. If we used a 12 hour clock, arguably am/pm doesn't really make sense, but I doubt we'd invent another word for it, it would just become one of those terms that people would say "yes, it doesn't make literal sense, but it takes back to those primitive times when", etc. Like "clockwise" doesn't make sense to people who use only digital clocks. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 21:40 | comment | added | costrom | @Oldcat CST is UTC-6, not UTC+6 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 17:39 | comment | added | Oldcat | Well you wouldn't use PM - that's already a relative measurement from local noon..."post meridian". If everyone used Zulu (GMT time) you just would need to know when noon was in Zulu at any location you are interested in. For instance, the Central Time Zone is +6 hours from Zulu. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 17:25 | comment | added | Joe Bloggs | All file systems should record the 'last updated' time in UTC. Some don't. I feel your pain. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 17:14 | history | answered | Jay | CC BY-SA 3.0 |