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.
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.
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.
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
But even in that scenario, this change wouldn’t benefit you because instead of needing to lookup and convert potential meeting times into their time zone, you’d need to lookup and convert their offset work hours into your work hours to find something that works for both of you.
This would be further complicated by certain offices allowing their employees to work different hours like imagine trying to schedule meetings with two branches in the same time zone currently but one operates 7-4 and the other operates 9-6. After this change you’d need to do an extra calculation to account for this while the current system would have both branches sharing the same base time since they’re in the same regional time zone. This takes 24 regional time zones and changes them to a million individual “time zones” set by each individual business around the world.
Oh, you’re talking about solar time? Yeah, that gets messy when every 1 second slice of the planet is essentially a small time zone.
Anyway, I was just thinking of having a single universal time. When scheduling meetings, everyone would just need to tell what time window is ideal and what’s tolerable. Just like nowadays, you would still need to look at a meeting planner to figure it which time that works for everyone.
And then it’s still rare even if it’s happening to you.
It’s rare to most people. A subset of the population deals with this mess every week.
At which time, UTC covers the job perfectly. It’s also great for keeping computer logs consistent.
True, but you still need to coordinate meeting schedules. The current system means it’s a total disaster, but a universal time would turn that into a genuine headache. I guess the latter is still preferable, given the options.
UTC is designed to be unambiguous, not convenient. I’d imagine most companies would either remap to local times for convenience, or have calculated windows when meetings are reasonable between various parties.
If only people actually used that.
Nevertheless, that’s a good idea. I’ll have to check if any apps or sites take advantage of it. Sounds like a pretty neat solution.