
The case against time zones: They're impractical and outdated - kordless
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/5970767/case-against-time-zones?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=ezraklein&utm_content=tuesday
======
jtheory
No; this isn't a good idea. The developers on our team live in 3 different
time zones (this number has been as high as 6 in the past), so I have some
experience in this.

Times have _meanings_ that would be quite difficult to track without the
reference points.

I'd be happy if daylight savings were gone -- that's much more cost than it's
worth. But even if it _were_ possible to switch everyone to UTC, it'd be
awful.

Let's say you're in SF and you want to schedule a conference call with someone
in Bangalore. You'll use worldtimebuddy.com or similar to compare your day
with theirs, and you'll find that your first thought, 2pm, is 2:30am in
Bangalore. So... maybe you can get up early -- 7am for you is 7:30pm for them.
Better ask if maybe they'd prefer to meet after dinner, or (since you stay up
late) perhaps YOU could call after your dinner and catch them at 9am Bangalore
time... that's when the most common working day starts.

Think about doing this check _without_ timezones. 2pm for you is... 2pm for
them! How useless to know that. So you'll still need some reference to figure
out when they will probably start their workday, when they'll probably break
for lunch or go home for dinner, etc.. But how can you refer to those times
sensibly without using times? You'll say "oh, so 2pm for YOU is sort of like 2
AM for me, how awful that I called your mobile then". And boom, you've re-
invented timezones.

~~~
lmm
> Let's say you're in SF and you want to schedule a conference call with
> someone in Bangalore. You'll use worldtimebuddy.com or similar to compare
> your day with theirs, and you'll find that your first thought, 2pm, is
> 2:30am in Bangalore. So... maybe you can get up early -- 7am for you is
> 7:30pm for them. Better ask if maybe they'd prefer to meet after dinner, or
> (since you stay up late) perhaps YOU could call after your dinner and catch
> them at 9am Bangalore time... that's when the most common working day
> starts.

And then you discover that you misread the direction of the shift and you
actually should have arranged in the early morning for you, or you've checked
time in that country's capital rather than in the place your contact is, or
they thought the time you gave them was in your timezone... _and neither of
you realize you 've fucked up until meeting time_.

Without timezones, you look the timezones up and suggest 7pm, but you've
shifted the wrong way and that's the middle of the night for them when you
thought it was early afternoon? So you say "how about 7pm" and either they say
"no, that's the middle of the night, how about 10am", or they just get up in
the middle of the night. But either way, that time you've agreed is completely
unambiguous for both of you and there's no way for it to go wrong.

~~~
manicdee
You could use a calendar that is aware of timezones, and then you and your
contact both see the meeting time as local time rather than someone else's
timezone.

Without timezones, each person attending the meeting has to do the mental
calculation, "04:00UTC is 14:00 my time, so I'll actually be awake for that
meeting, and will have to ensure I don't start anything big after lunch." And
then you'll make mistakes "12:00? that's fine … oh, it's actually just after
midnight my time".

All these arguments about timezone math and "getting the shift the wrong
direction" apply to "let's all use UTC". In fact if we all use UTC it makes
the problem demonstrably worse: you now have to do the adjustment all the
time. No longer does "6pm" mean "close to sunset" for most people. You have to
keep a sunset/sunrise calculator with you at all times just so you can
remember what time to set that alarm in order to be at the local office on
time. Then when you travel between places that will used to have timezones
you'll need to adjust your sunset/sunrise calculator. No longer can you simply
set the alarm to go off at 6am local time.

You're replacing a superficial problem with an actual one: everyone who
doesn't live in the reference time locality will be living on bizarre time.

So how about just using a calendar system that stores information in UTC but
presents it in local time, and exchange calendar appointments with your
colleagues using this calendaring system so nobody has to do the mental math
when transcribing the appointment into their calendar?

My calendar already does this. It's a solved problem, and changing the
solution won't make the problem go away.

~~~
lmm
> Without timezones, each person attending the meeting has to do the mental
> calculation, "04:00UTC is 14:00 my time, so I'll actually be awake for that
> meeting, and will have to ensure I don't start anything big after lunch."

No you don't. The whole point is there's no "14:00 my time". You just work
from 23:00UTC to 08:00UTC and take your lunch at 02:00UTC. All your clocks are
UTC.

> No longer does "6pm" mean "close to sunset" for most people. You have to
> keep a sunset/sunrise calculator with you at all times just so you can
> remember what time to set that alarm in order to be at the local office on
> time. Then when you travel between places that will used to have timezones
> you'll need to adjust your sunset/sunrise calculator. No longer can you
> simply set the alarm to go off at 6am local time.

True, it makes life harder for people who are physically travelling to a
different office every week. But how many is that, compared to the number of
people who need to arrange a phone/video call with someone in a different
office? And that ratio is only going to push further.

> You're replacing a superficial problem with an actual one: everyone who
> doesn't live in the reference time locality will be living on bizarre time.

What's the problem? You get up at 01:00, the shops open at 03:00, you go to
bed at 19:00 - so what? Ask anyone who lives in Vladivostok.

------
parfe
So we all shift to a single glorious time zone to solve all the author's
pains. You still need to remember "zones".

You work in NY and propose a meeting at 1300 GMT? You still need to remember
how far ahead London is, how far behind California is. Want to call your
cousin in Tokyo? You still need to know when she's likely to be awake. Heading
to a vacation and want someone to pick you up from the airport? You need to
know if your flight lands in the middle of the night or while your ride is at
work.

Sure, you could divide the world up into 24 zones and call it a day. Then
people still face the same problem of a strong dividing line separating
suburbs and cities. Or a country split between two or three zones when it
really only needs one. And then you realize, as a self centered programmer,
people aren't robots and local time makes sense for 99.9% of peoples' lives.

~~~
lmm
> You work in NY and propose a meeting at 1300 GMT? You still need to remember
> how far ahead London is, how far behind California is.

But it's a lot easier to see when the appropriate time is if you know London
works 8am-4pm GMT and California works 4pm-12am GMT, than trying to remember
that they're three hours behind and calculate it every time.

> Heading to a vacation and want someone to pick you up from the airport? You
> need to know if your flight lands in the middle of the night or while your
> ride is at work.

If you're talking to them they can presumably tell you. Again, much easier if
they know what time they sleep in GMT than if you have to calculate it afresh
for each conversation.

> And then you realize, as a self centered programmer, people aren't robots
> and local time makes sense for 99.9% of peoples' lives.

People in eastern Russia, or western China, already work on a distinctly
nonlocal time. It works well; the shops open at whatever time makes sense
local time, but when you call someone across the country you can talk about
times with them without getting confused.

~~~
chrismcb
It would probably be a bit simpler to remember that California is 8 hours
behind London than to remember their work schedule is 4pm to midnight( oh
wait, 12am is no longer midnight)

------
onwchristian
If you move to one time zone, dates get complicated as well. You may have
meetings scheduled on separate dates but in the same business day. Birthdays:
they're now the afternoon of one day and the morning of the next.

Furthermore, while travelers may not have to change their wristwatch to
account for the local time, they still would have to grasp "what time the
locals do X." This may be more difficult for people to reason about if they
can't easily draw on their expected scheduling from "back home." Simply
knowing that 8:00 to 5:00 is a common work-day will no longer be easily
translated, as it may be 11:00-20:00 one place and 05:00-14:00 somewhere else.

In any case, people are creatures of habit, so they tend to fight change. So I
don't foresee this ever happening, regardless of whether it would solve some
problems (and debatably it may cause as many problems as it solves).

~~~
jtheory
> Furthermore, while travelers may not have to change their wristwatch to
> account for the local time, they still would have to grasp "what time the
> locals do X."

Good point -- everyone is welcome to switch to this system _now_ , when
traveling. Just don't reset your watch.

You'll just need to learn the new time to set your alarm in the morning, the
new time to say "whoa, we'd better get lunch before restaurants close", the
new time to think about getting the kids to bed....

It's so much easier to just reset your watch (or like most people I know, just
double-check your phone has auto-updated to the new time zone), and keep your
reference points.

------
Coincoin
Yeah, changing date when everyone is sleeping is a horrible backward idea, I
want my days to change randomly in the middle of daylight.

We could then invent a new word to differentiate between the "day" as the date
and "day" as this daylight cycle. Then we would need seven new week day names
to differentiate between the official date and light cycle. Lot of fun in
perspective.

But then it would make visiting other countries easier, no need to set my
watch... oh... wait I have to change my whole brain to adapt to the new
schedule instead.

~~~
blahedo
This is the issue where it really falls apart for me. As someone who regularly
stays up until 2 or 3 or 5 am even now, I'm well aware of the careful phrasing
that is required if I send an email in the wee hours referring to upcoming
events---"today" and "tomorrow" are to be avoided, or clarified. Probably most
of the people here have had to be careful about this at some point. But, it's
a reasonably constrained problem, as it currently stands; at least we don't
generally have to deal with events that cross the date boundary.

If that date transition happened in the middle of the bulk of daytime events,
though....

------
taylodl
Timezones are fairly simple to handle, it's Daylight Saving Time that brings
an inordinate amount of difficulty. Some timezones observe DST, some do not.
The switchover to/from DST is at different dates for different timezones -
often even different dates for different years in the same timezone! DST makes
date/time calculations extremely difficult and error prone. Eliminating DST
would be a huge step to bringing some level of normalcy back to time.

~~~
hadoukenio
> Timezones are fairly simple to handle

I guess you've never had to deal with time zones then.

DST isn't the only thing you need to take into account. You're forgetting that
cities, states and countries modify their timezones for political reasons e.g.
America/Sitka went from UTC-8 to UTC-9 in 1983. Just to repeat this if it's
not clear, that's a UTC offset change for the Sitka zone, not a DST update.

~~~
nl
This kind of thing isn't even that rare, if you look historically and even
applies to whole days.

The most extreme example was how the Swedish calendar attempted to swap to the
Gregorian calendar:

 _n November 1699, Sweden decided that, rather than adopting the Gregorian
calendar outright, it would gradually approach it over a 40-year period. The
plan was to skip all leap days in the period 1700 to 1740. Every fourth year,
the gap between the Swedish calendar and the Gregorian would reduce by one
day, until they finally lined up in 1740. In the meantime, this calendar would
not only not be in line with either of the major alternative calendars, but
also the differences between them would change every four years.

In accordance with the plan, February 29 was omitted in 1700, but due to the
Great Northern War no further reductions were made in the following years.

In January 1711, King Charles XII declared that Sweden would abandon the
calendar, which was not in use by any other nation and had not achieved its
objective, in favour of a return to the older Julian calendar. An extra day
was added to February in the leap year of 1712, thus giving it a unique 30-day
length (February 30).

In 1753, one year later than England and its colonies, Sweden introduced the
Gregorian calendar, whereby the leap of 11 days was accomplished in one step,
with February 17 being followed by March 1._[1]

So February 30 1712(!) is a valid date in Sweden, but February 17 1753 + 1 day
= March 1.

Imagine building something like a utility billing system over a time period
like that....

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar#Solar_calendar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar#Solar_calendar)

------
mikestew
It's like the college kid sitting around with his buds in the dorm room,
smoking a little weed: "dude, did you ever think that maybe what I see as
'blue' is different than what you see as 'blue'?" Most of us soon find out
that we're not the first to think of it (not even close), and we also quickly
figure out why you'd have to be stoned on bud to think that's a deep thought.

I mentally picture the same thing here. "Dude, instead of all of these time
zones that make my work difficult, what if we had one big time zone?" Based on
the comments here, most of us have figured out why it's not a brilliant idea,
and no, we're not the first to think of it. The author instead wrote a blog
post about it.

~~~
coldtea
> _and we also quickly figure out why you 'd have to be stoned on bud to think
> that's a deep thought._

That's only because most people are like sheep, capable of only thinking of
their immediate practical problems.

Far from being just a "stoner discussion", the perception (of color etc)
question has been examined in length, both in philosophy and cognitive
science, and is as deep as they go indeed.

------
AndrewDucker
These things come up in computing circles on a regular basis

"Wouldn't it be easier to write my code if I didn't have to deal with time
zones?"

All you have to do, of course, is persuade people to change their entire
system of local time, which is what they use 99% of the time. How hard can it
be?

~~~
Zikes
When a system becomes so complicated that you find it difficult to express
logically in the context of a machine built to run on logic, I think it's fair
to say that system has some flaws.

~~~
rodgerd
The flawed system in this question is the machine, not the time zone.

------
kleiba
Funnily, before clicking on this link, I was expecting that the author would
suggest that instead of discrete time zones we should have continuous ones,
e.g., no matter where you are, it's always noon when the sun is highest. You
know, just like it used to be pre modern times, and I was kinda curious how
the author thinks he could pull something like that off in a completely
different society.

Instead, his suggestion is pretty much the opposite: instead of discrete time
zones, let alone continuous ones, the proposal is to have one static time zone
globally. Strange that the headline calls the _current_ system "impractical",
as the disadvantages of a single global time zone are kind of obvious (see the
comments here on HN).

I suppose, the current system is a good compromise that tries to address the
disadvantages of continuous and static models.

------
robbrown451
This is stupid. While true we didn't have time zones per se until fairly
recently, it was worse... Basically noon was when the sun was directly south,
which means one town away might be five minutes off.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
I agree it's stupid. Just as stupid as the harebrained proposals that
occasionally pop up to divide a day into perhaps 10,000 seconds. Or to throw
out our current calendar and maybe have 10 months of 36 days with 5 extra
holidays a year. Etc.

Not gonna happen. But the reason it gets talked about at all is because it's
something that ordinary people can think about and propose. It's not rocket
science.

As an alternative, wake me up when the USA goes completely metric. That's
something much more important and useful and still it hasn't happened in my
lifetime, even though I was taught metric in school nearly 50 years ago.

~~~
mikestew
> As an alternative, wake me up when the USA goes completely metric.

Oh, $DEITY, don't get me started on that off-topic topic. All that book
learnin' forty years ago and all we got out of it was 2 liter bottles of soda.
We don't even get the miles/kilometers signs anymore. At least I rarely have
to deal with SAE fasteners these days.

But point taken: we're not getting rid of time zones if the U. S. can't even
jump on board on the measurement system used by every other country (yeah I
exaggerate a bit, Captain Pedantic) in the world.

------
duckingtest
China has one time zone [1] and it works. I don't really see any advantage
over timezones though.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/11/china-
only-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/11/china-only-has-one-
time-zone-and-thats-a-problem/281136/)

~~~
oasisbob
I was going to raise the same point, but with India.

Would be interested to hear how these "wide-zones" work in practice from
people who have lived in them for a while.

------
nl
Been done, since 1998[1]. Had mainstream coverage when it launched. Been
totally ignored ever since.

[1]
[http://www.swatch.com/zz_en/internettime/](http://www.swatch.com/zz_en/internettime/)

------
syntaxgoonoo
Interesting article, but a bit far fetched. You can sync your clocks to GMT,
nothing stopping you do that. But I doubt you will convince anyone else to.
And what about daylight saving time? As much as I hate daylight saving, its
still a custom that is used in many parts of the world. There was no mention
of this in your article. In the end of the day, we are all quite used to
syncing our clocks relative to sunrise. 9am means the same thing where ever
you are in the world. So in some ways time zone keeps us all in reasonably in
sync to sunrise

~~~
coldtea
> _Interesting article, but a bit far fetched. You can sync your clocks to
> GMT, nothing stopping you do that. But I doubt you will convince anyone else
> to._

I don't think it was about "convincing". It was about it happening by decree.
You know, just like how the timezones we use were enforced in the first place,
or Gregorian calendar, or any other regular time keeping...

------
manicdee
If you think this is a good idea, just set all your clocks to UTC and start
coordinating meetings with people using only UTC.

If the idea has any merit, people will go with your superior plan :)

------
DanBC
Swatch Beats were a better idea to communicate unambiguous time. I kind of
wish some big websites would adopt it - Reddit AMAs for example.

~~~
Zikes
Any benefits to that over UTC?

~~~
lamby
Well, it's in base 10 rather than base 60. But, yeah, perhaps it's even more
quixotic than Esperanto..

------
altoz
This proposal reminds me of the people that want to redo the world's calendar
(every year still has 365 days, but each Jan 1st is always Monday, for
example).

Changing something as deeply ingrained as time simply isn't going to happen
anytime soon.

