Why don't the whole planet just use UTC+00:00 / Universal Time without time zones?
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Because we like midnight to happen at night, and noon to happen during the day
wrote on last edited by [email protected].
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
because despite all the technological advancement, we still live enclosed in these self-ambulatory lumps of flesh that crave the sun.
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
So if I'm in Vancouver BC it would go from Friday to Saturday in the mid afternoon? Is Friday night the first night of the weekend or the last night of the work week?
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wrote on last edited by [email protected]
Not very convenient if a date change happens during your typical workday and that your meeting is from Monday 23:00 o’clock until Tuesday 1:00 o’clock. I mean, sure, we could deal with it, but locally it only adds new complexity.
Sure, you could talk with anyone in the world and agree on a time without misunderstandings, but as soon as you want to know if people in the other country are even awake at that time, or if it’s during business hours, you need to do the same calculations as before and need to look up how many hours the schedule is shifted in that country, similar to before.
My Anki deck (flashcards app) would like to know when it’s the next day. It now uses a standard (configurable) value worldwide (4:00 o’clock, to allow for late nights). If we used UTC everywhere, a standard value wouldn’t make any sense, and you would have to know the local offset, and change it when you are traveling.
Taking about traveling: instead of just changing the time zone on your devices and be done with it, you need to look up what time you should go to sleep and wake up and at what time the stores open to fit the local schedule and none of the hours that you’re used to would make any sense. Let’s have dinner at 19:00 o’clock. No, wait, that’s in the early morning here.
We already have UTC as a standard reference, and we don’t need to adopt it for local time, as long as the offset is clear when communicating across borders. Digital calendars already take time zones into account, so when I’m inviting people from overseas, they know at what time in their local timezone the meeting starts.
The issue is not the time zones, but the fact that we live on a sphere revolving around a star and that our biological system likes to be awake when it’s light outside.
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
It would make it even harder for people to understand when it was in a different timezone. Right now I know that 11pm is late for anyone on thier own timezone. But with no timezone, I would say, the meeting is at 23:00. Thats mid morning for me, what is that for you... the answer is way less exact, and harder to covert.
So you day is my day minus half a morning? -
Why isn't this a popular thing?
Most people don't have to deal with booking a meeting a few timezones away or anything else where it would be an advantage on a regular basis.
It's convenient if the date, and possibly weekday, changes at night.
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This happens anyway. I literally have meetings every week where it's Tuesday night for everyone else on the meeting, and Wednesday morning for me.
That's different, your day remains Wednesday their day remains Tuesday, they're talking about going to lunch on Tuesday and coming back on Wednesday, do you call that your Tuesday lunch? Tuesday Dinner? Wednesday breakfast? Wednesday lunch?
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That's different, your day remains Wednesday their day remains Tuesday, they're talking about going to lunch on Tuesday and coming back on Wednesday, do you call that your Tuesday lunch? Tuesday Dinner? Wednesday breakfast? Wednesday lunch?
Legal things would be a mess.
Your visa is valid until the end of the month. Halfway through the day?
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Have you ... have you never stayed up past midnight?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Not while at work. And at parties, it's rarely of concern what day or time it is.
If I lived like a hermit in a first, yeah, it wouldn't matter.
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because despite all the technological advancement, we still live enclosed in these self-ambulatory lumps of flesh that crave the sun.
Living in the same timezone doesn't mean waking up and going to bed at the same time.
You can still consider whatever time the sun gets up in your area as morning and the dusk will tell you when it's evening.
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
For the same reason the whole planet does not use the metric system (I'm looking at you america, you old faded superpower).
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
100% because 0 is set to UK/France. Utc 0 should have been somewhere in the middle of pacific if it was ever intended to be adopted. Now why would India or smt set their clocks to UK?
As someone who mostly lives on UTC it's such a sad wasted opportunity and it'll never be widely adopted.
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
Because that would be a nightmare. "I'll meet you for lunch at 2AM", "No, I had a huge breakfast yesterday". You would need to relearn the times every time you went to a different place, "oh, right, the restaurants only serve lunch until 10AM" or "Sorry sir, but there's an extra fee for night time services starting 1PM". Those are much more likely day-to-day phrases than scheduling a meeting with someone from another continent. And you don't gain anything by this, because whenever you're communicating across timezones you can simply use UTC as a standard and everyone knows how to convert that to their own time. So there's no good reason and a lot of drawbacks.
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For the same reason the whole planet does not use the metric system (I'm looking at you america, you old faded superpower).
Because base 10 is vastly inferior to base 12? Go ahead, divide a kilometer into thirds without repeating decimals YOU CANT WHERES YOUR ANTOIN LAVOISER NOW
Babylon was right.
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
I believe no one else mentioned this but... China is a case study of why this is a terrible idea
The entire PRC uses the same time zone, even though in any other parts of the world, China should have been split to at least 3 different timezones
It is very disorienting to try and go for breakfast in Tibet at 9 am to find that nothing is open and the sun is just out... So yeah. Imagine if this is extended to 12-hr differences
Wikipedia has a nice summary of this
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Because that would be a nightmare. "I'll meet you for lunch at 2AM", "No, I had a huge breakfast yesterday". You would need to relearn the times every time you went to a different place, "oh, right, the restaurants only serve lunch until 10AM" or "Sorry sir, but there's an extra fee for night time services starting 1PM". Those are much more likely day-to-day phrases than scheduling a meeting with someone from another continent. And you don't gain anything by this, because whenever you're communicating across timezones you can simply use UTC as a standard and everyone knows how to convert that to their own time. So there's no good reason and a lot of drawbacks.
I am baffled that needs explanation!
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Living in the same timezone doesn't mean waking up and going to bed at the same time.
You can still consider whatever time the sun gets up in your area as morning and the dusk will tell you when it's evening.
What's the point of having the same time zone when people are not going by it?
Like, "hey when you go to Singapore you gotta pay attention as the shops open at 22:00 and close at 13:00"!
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What's the point of having the same time zone when people are not going by it?
Like, "hey when you go to Singapore you gotta pay attention as the shops open at 22:00 and close at 13:00"!
wrote on last edited by [email protected]The point is to avoid timezone confusion and simplify international cooperation. Inside the countries, there are some successful experiments: for example, China is present in 5 time zones, but the entire nation lives by UTC+8. And while 5 time zones are not 24, this arrangement is generally regarded positively by the people, despite the fact it's measured by Beijing, which is located on the east, and not by some point in the middle of the country.
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
It's because a lot of the way humans go about their life is based on traditions. Getting everybody to switch from a system that already works pretty well is just a hassle.
Examples:
- English spelling is faaar from phonetic and children take longer to learn how to spell than in Spanish for example. (though, cough, enough, plough instead of something like thouğ, koff, enaf and the US plow)
- Metric system adopted globally would streamline a lot of global industries that have no cater to each system.
- Driving right side everywhere. Sweden switched but asking India to switch makes way less sense.
- Date formats. Arguably the best if everyone uses ISO 8601 but nobody does.
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
That would make time more unrelated to the sun, which is pretty important.
