The biggest problem with universal time is that now you don't know what time people in foreign countries you're having business meetings with go to sleep or have business hours. With time zones you can make a fairly good educated guess.
But you can still figure that out just as easily. With our current time zone system, you have to figure out that time zone calculation every single time you want to coordinate something. You can still just look up what the sunrise/sunset time is in a certain area, you just have to look it up less often under universal time.
@@MrHatoi Unless a country is very close to the pole, then I don't need to look up sunrise or sunset under our current time zone system. I can just guess that people will wake up around 7 am local time give or take an hour.
@@kunwoododd2154 Imagine you get used to your new time schedule, which has arbitrary time X when people wake up and Y when they go to sleep, and which probably still corresponds to the schedule you used to have with maybe a little adjustment. Then just like you look up today "OK this country is 4 timezones ahead of me" or "this country is 7 timezones behind me", you look up the same value, except, now this value does not depend on political borders and on whether the country has entered or exited the DST yet (which happens on different weekends), but on pure geographic distance, they're much easier to maintain a mental model of. Really the number doesn't matter. Even if in your part of the world, the numbers work out like "we wake up at 17:00 and we go to sleep at 9:00", you get used to these numbers, and then you just add or subtract the number of geographic timezones between you and the other place to figure out what time on the timescale that you are now accustomed to the other country would be. And when you make an international appointment, you both write it down and execute it at UTC timestamp rather than "8pm my time" or "noon your time". You even go through the same scheduling motions, except you both communicate times when you're available in UTC, and you assign the time in UTC. Nothing changes for travel either, you don't exactly need an oracle to tell you that if you're travelling from Helsinki to Barcelona, you're probably going to be fine, but if between continents the other side of the globe, you're probably going to be jetlagged somewhat fierce and would need some time to recover. Which is not to say that the transition is necessarily painless, but the only difficult part is re-learning your new local times, rather than figuring out how to communicate with other countries. There is no long term fundamental detriment at all.
Siana Gearz no fundamental detriment for that exact use case. But the people that have Friday switch to Saturday in the middle of the day are sure going to have an annoying time coordinating lots of situations. “Hey I’m off work Thursday” becomes “Hey I’m off Thursday morning and Friday night” which looks ridiculous but is actually correct because Thursday night would come BEFORE Thursday morning. And you cant say “hey I’m off work Thursday-Friday” because that might mean the one single work day that starts Thursday morning and ends Friday night, or it could mean you’re taking off early around when Wednesday becomes Thursday, and staying off the next entire Thursday-Friday and the following Friday morning and finally coming back on Saturday evening. People on night shifts have similar problems, but at least for them Friday night comes AFTER Friday morning lol. And yeah, we COULD do it, but IMO that is more detrimental to more people than timezone so are
@@jmunt Maybe rethinking weekdays would be a solution. What if they started on midnight in some regions as they do now, and where it's inconvenient, they start at noon instead?
Every time I hear this come up, people forget the most basic part of this. How do you handle the simple case of "tomorrow" or "yesterday" under this new system? Or how do you handle dates at all? If you are lucky and happen to be in a place where your clock coincides with a normal day, you're in luck. However, what if your "business hours" are now 22:00 to 07:00? Your "date" would shift over in the middle of working hours. So, what does tomorrow mean in this case? What does yesterday mean? Yes, this would solve the issue of meeting with people in other timezones. However, it makes meeting with people in your own timezone more complex needlessly. Remember, we established clocks and timezones to model the existing daytime/nighttime rhythm. It wouldn't do to toss that out to try to remove complexity when the resulting answer would just make things worse.
@@eduardoxenofonte4004 It's not. Imagine having to schedule a conference call internationally. You now have to look up what time the sun rises in all participating locations, rather than simply looking up (or knowing) what offset they use. Otherwise you run the risk of unnecessarily scheduling it in the middle of the night for some participants. That is much more inconvenient.
@@eduardoxenofonte4004 The point is: Checking the time of sunrise is just as inconvenient. If such a drastic change won't improve this, why even bother?
I think wonder why put it best. You're solving one issue while causing another. This would lead time to loose it's context and meaning. You went from not knowing your friend's timezone to not knowing what time he's free.
@@raver377 Okay let me elaborate. I thought it was clear due to the context but I guess I need to spell it out. So if everywhere followed the same time you loose the context that time gives you. Currently if a friend lives in another time zone, you know that in his local time say around 17:00 he will probably be having his dinner, 15:00 probably finishing up work or school. 03:00 He's probably asleep. And it's easy just to add or subtract the hours so you can know what times best for him. Meanwhile if you all follow the same timezone, doesn't mean you all do the same things at the same time, when the sun's down he will likely be asleep still, it's just now since you both follow the same timezone, you cant just add or subtract hours because that will give you no context as to what the real time is there. So you could call him at 16:00, but that actually might be the middle of the night. Another example if you step off a long hall flight, currently you look at your phone it tells you the local time and job done, you know the time and you know roughly when most places open and shut, when most people will be free etc. Meanwhile with only one timezone you cant do that, you just have to guess off the sun, but if it's say half way up in the sky, does that make it morning or afternoon?
Oswald, the times at which people have their meals, work, have school and sleep are cultural. My family usually has dinner between 19h and 20h, 17h sounds extremely early. School here ends between 11:30 and 13:30, or between 16h and 17:30, never 15h. Work has a lot more variation, but 15h is definitely not a usual time for the end of the work day. While many people are still awake at 3h, I do agree that it’s usually understood that it’s not a good time for a phone call. Still, I don’t doubt that there are cultures where it’s not frowned upon.
Instead of single countries changing to UTC, it should become the official timezone of the internet. This way people can keep their local time and use UTC online. It is much, much easier to remember your local time relative to UTC only, than to convert to every local time that you need to know around the world. How to make this possible? Easy, use UTC time only when communicating online and encourage everyone else you know to do it too. This way it will spread around the world and we all will benefit by this.
@@mateuszzimon8216 the underlying systems on your pc use utc. Users of those systems do not use utc (normally). OP is suggesting users use UTC when communicating online
@@nate998877 UTC standards have been used for internet communication for the most part anyway, like contests, or internet games, the UTC is used as the basis, seeing day and nighttime is not as important (although wake range is considered).
Im certain everyone always ask this. How much +/- UTC? And from that just look at clock and do some simple calculation in less than 30 second and you will know their activity time compared to yours. Putting everyone into UTC as a time only makes it harder by asking their habit one by one. Instead of just knowing the rough estimation of their schedule which is enough.
This literally ignores that the primary point of time is to know the position of the sun. When you look up what the time in another country is, you're not trying to find out what some arbitrary numerical representation of time is, you want to know where the sun is in the place compared to where it is in your location. I'm looking up what time it is in Korea based on what my time is in California to not call my buddy in the wee hours of the morning over there. Thus, if we just used UTC, it adds literally more work, now, you only need to know the UTC offset. In this parallel world, for every location you'd need to memorize sunrise and sunset, then do math to determine how many hours it has been since the closest sunrise/sunset mark. Literally nothing improves, and life just gets more difficult.
If we all adopt UTC, instead of asking “What time is it in Finland”, we would just ask “Are people in Finland awake at 11:00?”. Doesn’t really fix the problem.
@@mdbk2 Any reasonable person would convert the time and confirm it with whoever they're talking with. You don't go call someone overseas without agreeing on the time first, that's just rude and lazy
@@akirasakuchi Yeah, and that's exactly what's such a pain. If you could just skip the googling and maths, ask your friend if he can text you at some point between 18-23, and he can immediately understand what that means, it would make it a lot easier.
@@goksir5845 But now when you travel to another timezone you always have to Google and/or memorize their work hours, which is even more of a pain if you travel a lot. This is just replacing a problem with another problem but with the extra inconvenience of having almost everything on earth (human and technology) to change a system that works perfectly as it is right now. Again, no reasonable person would call someone overseas without specifying the timezone, especially if it's to someone they rarely called directly (like an aunt in Europe that you only call once a year for example)
the problem with ditching timezones is now you've also complicated dates. Consider if we use UTC: In Europe, we basically stay the same: 23:59:59 on 3-Aug-21 is followed by 00:00:00 4-Aug-21. But is the same true elsewhere? In North America and Asia, when midnight hits during the middle of your day, does the date change with it? Does it suddenly become Saturday as you're leaving for lunch break - whoops, now it's the weekend! We obscure this problem currently by making the date change happen at an hour when most of us are either in bed, or about to be in bed - we're not conducting significant business, at any rate.
I don't see how it solves the problem. Right now you have to know the timezone of the region. With universal time you will have to know the business hours of the region. Yes, you won't be confused by time when you communicate with someone abroad. But you will now get extra confused when you travel abroad. Sounds like a terrible idea.
Only itsy bitsy problem. You are asking all countries in the world to drop their cultural conceptions about time that are tight to the hour of the day. In my opinion this will just lead to a point where the countries that can will just create their own universal time. Specially when you tell them that the British gets to keep noon and midnight
This actually would cause more confusion. Now, the time in a remote place would no longer communicate anything about that place. When I ask someone, "What time is it where you are?" and they say "3am", it automatically communicates to me its late (or early), dark outside, and they are likely headed to bed soon. If we shared the same time, all of that quick information is gone. If I need to coordinate calling, I can use UTC. But I don't need to switch everything for a niche purpose.
I don't see how that would be more confusing. In the first place you would never ask "What time is it where you are?". There are no more time zones, so you can just check your own clock. You could ask the question "what time zone are you in?" or "when does the sun rise where you are?" and it would give you the information you need.
@@adrianroed2178 No, that's more confusing. If all you want is to know the solar cycle at a different place, and not how it is off-set from your place, then time zones are the obvious solution.
@@petey5009 That's not a solution, that's a separate system to cover up the problems with the last one. 3 am is literally meaningless right there, and afternoon is way too unspecific.
@@petey5009 "Afternoon" has lost it's meaning since "Noon" is 12pm not 12am. This is just sowing confusion. It's easier to explain it's "3am in LOCATION". The vast majority of daily interactions don't require global awareness, they require local awareness. It doesn't matter to me what time it is in Tahiti in relation to what time it is to me in Detroit. It does matter to me what time I need to be at work and what that relates to in terms of what portion of the day it is.
@@kfirarthegamer798 The US, as a general rule, doesn't. I personally prefer AM/PM myself due to 12 hour clocks being the most common, though it's not hard to convert. 17:14 - 12:00 = 5:14 PM. 5:14 PM + 12 = 17:14
That would be hard to adjust to though cause if you say 18 PM I have no idea what time that is/how late/how dark it is intuitively unless I convert it in my head to 6 PM
The problem is if you ask your friend from a different part of the world what time it is for them and they say the same time as you, it might make you think that its earlier for them when it really is late for them and they have to go to bed soon
They’d probably end up saying “oh 13 is actually night for me.” Though that may get confusing if you have a friend in another country who always sleeps late so you think that their morning is later than it is, you just know your friends morning. But honestly we don’t need to know how bright it will be out in another place, even if we do sunsets always vary, what we just need is their availability
So ditching timezones would simplify cross-globe schedules? I agree it doesn't change much for whoever works with a single timezones, but instead, for people working with multiple timezones, they don't need to track different times anymore, right? Yay! Except - now they have to know what is the daylight and the working time everywhere else, which - isn't it yet more confusing?
It’s not much weirder than the date changing in the middle of the night. We don’t think it’s weird when we see the clock going from 23:59 to 00:00, we just go “huh, I guess it’s tomorrow”.
yeah but when your kids see the day change in 17.00 it won´t be weird because they have lived with it their hole lives if you would have grown up with this system it would not seem weird
It's not a good idea, because by flying to another country you should do research at what time it is normal for bussines to be open, for example if at neutral time it opens at 8 and closes at 17:00, somewhere else it could open at 16:00 and close at 03:00. It would be really confusing to know when it is evening and when it is daytime for the other person. It is much easier to just know thhe time difference and add or sunstract hours from your time to know their time.
@@joyuff When traveling to another country you would have to look up when everyone wakes up, eats lunch, goes to work, goes to bed etc. instead of just looking at the time zone difference
My big issue with no timezones is that most people don't deal with people internationally a lot, so these "issues" just aren't issues at all for them. On top of that the issues exist regardless of timezones. Coordinating time internationally would still be an issue because the issue is finding a time that works for everyone, not hours being called different things, because computers do the timezone conversion work for you. It also brings its own issues. If someone in another country tells me they did something something at 15:00 and I have context. I know what 15:00 is and what kind of things happen at that time. Now if you made everywhere UTC, someone can tell me they did something at 15:00 and I have no idea what that means. That story now needs qualifiers that 15:00 (which could be my sunrise) is actually the middle of the afternoon. Either way, they both have issues, and one is already in place, so to me, there is no need to change it. DST can go though, don't really need that at all.
Nah, this solution makes problems worse. Suppose I live in London and want to communicate with my uncle in Sydney. It's 10 am in here. I can have additional clock that tells me that it's 6 pm in Sydney, or just Google the time. Suppose everybody uses UTC. Now I know that it's 6 pm in Sydney, but it's totally meaningless to me. Now, instead of simple conversion, I've got to find out what are habits in Sydney. When normally people wake up and go to sleep? When do they go to school, because my uncle is a teacher and shouldn't be interrupted while at work? It doesn't help travellers either. Right now, when I fly to for example New York, my smartphone will update the time after arrival. If I have smartwatch, my watch will also update. If it's a good old classical watch, I'll look at my smartphone and change the time, not a big inconvenience. Now, suppose that what time of day will it be when I land. Right now, I Google the time and I know that it will be for example morning. If everybody uses UTC, I'll have to look up sunrise, sunset and then estimate what time of day it is. The timezones were created for a reason, and even though it's annoying and inconvenient system, the alternative is even worse
best solution imo is to include the UTC differential along with your time zone. The only real problem (at least to mee) seems to be the communication. By including the common factor along with your solar time, nearly all issues applicable to the common person vanish
One problem not addressed here is the fact that I have no idea what time it is on the other side of the planet. With time zones I can work out that there it's 9 am in the morning thus know I can call a person there. In universal time I would just have to guess that the sun is high enough there at 12 pm to call them.
Yeah but what about the Weekdays? How do you determine a Monday vs a Tuesday whenever using a Universal Time Zone? Or, is a day now being based off of the whole time, but that'll cause the problem of it could be hallway through the "day" (as in night to sunlight), and then the day changes from Tuesday to Wednesday. Wouldn't that get confusing quickly?
Regions could simply set their own time of day for the day to change, to coincide roughly with astronomical midnight. For example if it's midnight at 1845, then at 1845 it changes from one day to the next. It would just mean that electronic devices that tell the time and date would need to be updated to set a custom time of day for the day to change.
@@Pining_for_the_fjords Isn't this just similar to the problem we already have, but on a greater scale? In one region it could be Monday and another Tuesday, but they are in close proximity to one another so it would be confusing.
@@ajtheown Well the video only proposed the synchronisation of time, not days and dates. I was only suggesting how you could have universal time while preserving the local changing of days. I didn't mean that days and dates should be changed at precisely astronomical midnight based on your exact location, but it could be split into timezones like we have now. Each country could decide at what time it changes day. And it wouldn't have to be as exact as time zones (in theory) try to be now, as nobody would notice astronomical midnight like we do sunrise, midday and sunset. A country could legislate that the day changes any time while it's dark and most people are asleep, as people generally associate daytime being the start of a new day anyway.
Bax Mann how is this a problem? The region determines what time the sun rises and that’s when most people will go to work. If it’s 11pm on Sunday that’s a day off 11pm on Friday - work day. It’s a work day if it starts on Monday-Friday and a weekend if it starts on Saturday Sunday
I would argue that it would cause problems discussing daily activities with others. Afterall. I might say to a friend in Europe "I didn't sleep until 3 AM" they understand that is way late to be up. But if I say I was up until 13 that has no real value to them because unless they know exactly where I am they can't see how exactly late or early I was up. They may presume it was late for me from context but not how late. Time relative to the day is important for many social contexts.
I feel like a better and more realistic solution is just... popularize the knowledge and usage of UTC. That way you get to keep your time zone which more or less makes sense (where the numbers have significance that isn't purely localized to your rough longitude) and can be easily compared to times in other places; and the convenience of a system where there's no ambiguity is also had, by just, using those times as appropriate. Want to make sure you don't miss your flight? Check the UTC time. Want to avoid having to do time zone math? Just say UTC time. We don't need to end the use of time zones to get this convenience; and eliminating time zones would forfeit other conveniences in exchange, this is why they're still informally used in parts of China. They would absolutely still be used informally everywhere if such a worldwide policy change were to happen. It would be easier to get people to start using another time system in addition to their normal one than to completely abandon the one they're used to in favor of that new one, and I think it would have more benefits overall.
A lot of people in Western China use unofficial local time alongside Beijing Time. I'm not sure if Universal Time would work - right now, with just some exceptions, 12:00 is (approximately) noon and 00:00 is (approximately) midnight. We know, then, everywhere in the world, business time is 9 to 5. Universal time would mess with this, since, though it would make dealing with time zones easier, it would also make it harder to coordinate things since you wouldn't instinctively know if 10:00 is within business hours in both London or in Kuala Lumpur, for example. You would still have to look up what time of day, say, 12:00 would be for different places, which would probably be worse than just looking up time zones since different countries might decide on wildly different times for what business hours would be.
Knowing that it's 8am all over the world is good and all, but then 8am would lose all meaning, is it night time, daytime evening? The system we use now makes sense because if you call someone halfway across the world and they say it's 8am then you know, oh the sun just rose.
@@jonabiberacher1219 Well technically I guess you can say it's 0-12, though most would refer to it as 12-12, but if you're like me then you'd just subscribe to army time, the 24-hour format after all there is no rule stating you have to use the 12-hour format.
@@Faruq-xn4gj I fail to see how, I mean saying 23 hundred hours is no different from saying 11 pm, and if there is no time of day that correlates with that hour, then 23:00hrs or 11:00pm loses all meaning. Think of this in the context of jet lag, if you were to fly from Canada to India and arrive in the night, knowing the time is as useful as a search and rescue snail.
@@alandolawson1924 In my opinion, instead of completely ditching Time Zones clock we use both The Universal Time and The Time Zones clock at the same time into everyday live. The standard Time Zones used for something within a city with AM PM format and just represent night and day. The Universal Time must be use for long distance transportation/communication or a meeting so important that all parties must be on the same page on what time must be held.
How does this help? I still need to find a time the other guy will be awake/at work, and for that, I need to know his approximate longitude. Time zones are a good proxy for that.
Menmikimen Ok, but let's say they don’t tell you when their working hours are (for whatever reason) How are you going to figure it out? Time is the same for everyone, you may be fine at 01:00 but they might not be. Even if you know where they live, the country's average working hours likely won’t be posted. At least with timezones I might know where someone lives and can convert the rough time differences using google to determine if someone would be awake, unless they’re sleeping in late.
@@jayit6851 The problem with your aproximated guess is that we have 200 time zone names. If everyone just referred to their time zone as UTC+X it would be better.
Not really Me: can I call at 1300? You: no I usually sleep 10:00 to bout 1600 Me: hmmm I'm awake at 1800 can I call then? You: works for me Me: cool talk to you at 18
@@mikethomas8720 Equally today you can ask 'what's the time difference?' 'Okay, if it's a five hour difference shall I call you at my 10pm, your 5pm?' 'Yeah, no problem. Speak to you this evening'
With universal time, you'd have to remember the waking working and sleeping hours of other countries. That's just as tedious as remembering their time zone. It's a "pick your poison" situation.
they do so in China and for them it has been much better than multiple time zones bot says: China officially switched to a single time zone, Beijing Time (GMT+8), on January 1, 1980. This decision was made to promote national unity and to simplify communications and transportation schedules across the vast country, which geographically spans five time zones. Before this change, different regions of China operated on their own local time zones, which created complications for scheduling and broadcasting, among other things. The adoption of a single time zone meant that all of China, from its eastern shores to its western borders, would follow the same time as the capital, Beijing, regardless of the local solar time.
Sleeping hours will be a LOT closer to the original plan for the current time zone structure rather than what it is now. The sun won't adjust itself to fit the wants of terrestrial nations that easily ^^
So no random, confusing borders with multi hour jumps in a matter of miles. Plus sleeping time for other countries is already subjective with night owls and early birds in the mix!
Availability hours has always been a subjective thing and we will always have to work out our schedule regardless of time zone, because time zone is far from the only factor that affects it. However, it will be easier to communicate those hours and arrange meetings if we have the same time on our clocks at the same moment.
Well yes you could definitely get used to universal time, but I don't really see the benefit. It would take months of weirdness and confusion, just so that you can save a few words when planning a meeting internationally, which most people don't do that often. It would also kind of mess with our language. "Get back to me tomorrow" would become a confusing statement. Do you mean universal tomorrow i.e. the next day according to the calender, or sometime after the next local sunrise? Again, it's possible to adapt language accordingly, but the effort exceeds the benefit. Time zones really aren't that difficult to work with (unless you're a programmer, but they also figured out how to do it). The only annoying thing are the different names for the same timezone. Just always use UTC+X, instead of some regional name like "Pacific Time" or "Central European Time" and there's no problem.
Would tomorrow not just be any time after 12AM that day? As someone living virtually opposite UTC, the whole tomorrow thing is always an issue, especially with Americans which are nearly 24 hours behind us. It'd make 'tomorrow' less confusing if anything and it makes universal scheduling much easier. Do keep in mind there are many complicating factors related to timezones in areas of the world farthest from UTC including daylight savings, the date line difference and seasonal difference between both hemispheres and daylight savings times. Really I see a lot of benefit in changing it because the world is increasingly moving toward a globalised society with the internet, not just with commercial and diplomatic objectives, but also general social ones especially within the general public. Communication at all times has become commonplace and time has always been an issue for me as someone on the other side of the spectrum. We abandoned imperial measurement when society advanced enough to reliably produce equipment and meters for the general public to measure with and use with ease, so why not this?
When people go "it's at X in central time; figure it out for your time zone". Yeah, I would, but you never gave me the tools to do so. Give me the UTC time.
@@biponacci The difference between Imperial -> Metric and Solar Time -> Universal is that Metric is far more intuitive than Imperial, being based on a decimal system and all. Time though is mostly built upon our perception of it and how we build our lives around it (this is part of why DST exists actually). By switching from the more accurate* Solar-based times to the less accurate* Universal time, we'd essentially toss out human perception of time. A common example I've seen in these comments is that a day could flip while you're at work, or by moving to an area with a different UTC+/-, you wouldn't have clear indication of a time switch. Solar is simply more intuitive for humans to follow *Accuracy being defined as Earth's rotation relative to the Sun
Personally, I like combining the regional name with the offset. As an example, Central time is CST (UTC-6). Combines the common factor (UTC differential) with local terminology which can be quickly searched just in case they get an incorrect differential (as some places have shifting differentials depending on DST)
we need to use both local and UTC where appropriate. UTC for precision and coordination and the other to give an understanding where you are in the day locally, which UTC can never do. Rather than memorizing sunrise and sunset for every place on earth, you know right away that "2 am local time" is a bad time to schedule a meeting.
Historically, with the introduction of railways, there was a concept of "railway time" in conjunction with local time. Local time was based on solar time, and railway time acted like time zones do today. Using UTC in conjunction with local time zones could easily work as a sensible transitional step.
There's two major problems. The first is that the hours of the day would lose their meaning. While I might not immediately know what time it is in Japan, if someone tells me it's 2:00, I can assume they're asleep. With universal time, 2:00 could mean night, or day, or anything. The second problem is the fact that 0:00 can occur in the middle of the day for some places. This means that you could eat breakfast on Monday at 20:00 and eat dinner on Tuesday at 6:00. It's just not convenient to have the days of the week and even the dates to become arbitrary.
You do realize that in a lot of the world the date would change in the middle of the day and you would have no idea what time of day it would be somewhere else if you need to contact someone on the other end of the planet
@@Tzar1 But what about travels from one continent to another? For example if I were to travel for 10 hours from San Francisco at 8 I would arrive in Tokyo at 18, but ON A DIFFERENT DAY. See where it only makes things worse? Even if we remove International Date Line, how would we know what day it is or if we already moved to the next day or not?
This would totally screw up the days of the week. Imagine you live somewhere, where the normal 12:00 now becomes 0:00. Your Sunday would turn into a Monday midday. And after working, you would go home, sleep wake up, and it's still Monday for another half a day.
this creates another problem say the sun rises at 6 here in Australia then say i go to the USA at 6 the sun will be in the middle of the sky and if you alarm is set for 6 you wake up late unless you phone looks at where you are an offset the alarm time for you but that's no different to a time zone.
Before universal time "Hey let's zoom call at 3:00" "3:00 of which time zone?" After universal time "Uh had a bad day, overslept and woke up at 16:00" "what o'clock is your morning again?"
This is a horrible idea. Yes, it would work, but imagine someone over the internet saying "I woke up at 2am today" and not knowing if that's late or early.
Could be replaced with “I woke up x hours after/before the sun rose.” Or simply, “I woke up x hours early/late”. Let’s say 7am is considered the morning in your part of the world, and you woke up at 2am, you would say you woke up 5 hours early. If “morning” starts at 12pm (12:00), and you woke up at 6am, you woke up 6 hours early. In reality we’d just be switching the current time zones to 24ish different sets of how time is classified around the world. Morning, Afternoon, evening, and Night could change from the usual 6-11, 11-18, 18-21, 21-6, to 9-14, 14-21, 21-0, 0-9. This is if we all switch to 24 hour time which I already do personally. I think the big issue we have to deal with is the loss of global unified cultural meaning behind “6am” and “9pm”. New years is always connected to midnight, 11:59/23:59 changing 12:00/00:00. The new years change would be morning in some places, afternoon in others. Also it wouldn’t be easy. Even me, someone who has switched from am/pm time to 24 hour time over 2 years ago still sometimes has issues remembering it or doing quick “15:00 means 3pm” in my head.
@@Hotdogenthusiast Thank you for the interesting reply, but I still cannot say I agree with this idea. First of all, to say I woke up 5 hours early/late is too vague. What is early, and what is late? For some people it's 9:00, for others it's 5:00. A local time system allows you, the far-away reader of such a message to know, more or less objectively, how early one is, or how early one only claims to be, since the clock is supposed to represent more or less the position of the sun. Of course, this is far from exactly true, especially considering different seasons at the extremities of the globe. But how much more would it be erroneous, if the time was universal? Secondly, the local clock can also have a universal effect when traveling. The meaning is in fact deeply cultural as you say, so much so that even looking at a clock that says 10pm, you instantly know how late it is. Would you be able to say the same if those numbers were randomised? Suppose that you travel travel to a far-away country and wish to know when is the proper time to sleep, and fix your jet-lag, but the clocks show only international time. Why, one would have to ask a local to know what time is usual for that region to go to sleep at. And this may even change from region to region, like local time changed from town to town before. Lastly, I have to say that I didn't really like your comparison of this switch, to switching from the am/pm system to the full 24 hour notation, since these notations, which is what they are, can be used interchangeably as I used them here and the meaning stays the same. You're merely using different symbols to represent the same instance of time, whereas in this other case one would be using the same symbols to represent a different instance of time. On another note, if you're struggling finding the meaning of 15:00 for example, take away 2 and look at the last digit, it will give you the time in am/pm. I do think an international time has its advantages, but they outweigh the disadvantages of not having local time. Sorry if I forgot to mention anything, since I am typing this on my phone and thus cannot look at your message while I'm typing.
@@filiprank9870 You are correct. It can be simplified to the fact that one universal time for everyone everywhere completely defeats the reason for having the "time of day" concept in the first place. At that stage all times become meaningless and you might as well use a UNIX timestamp for everything, which really just shows how useless this system would be. The whole point of "time of day" is so that it is easy to coordinate personal and social schedules across the planet. Anyone who thinks that is a problem cant do basic math and|or doesn't believe in a [mostly] spherical Earth, and|or doesn't understand how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The problem is how messed up the time zones are, mostly because of politics, not the time zones themselves.
I mean realistically the actual way to solve this problem is to just give people a SEPARATE UTC clock. That way they have their timezone time and their UTC time. This is how computers work (well the timezone time is just an offset from UTC but you get the point). Switching everyone to a universal time only would cause a different set of annoyances and confusion, so just having both makes sense. There is less confusion because there is more information.
I feel like the benefit of timezones is that you have a rough idea of where the sun is in another place at another time. Unless we all get really good at imagining where every other country is, I think universal time would take away the biggest benefit of solar time. I mean, if someone from England tries to talk to someone from Australia, currently it's super easy for someone to be like "no, it's 1AM in Australia then, I won't be awake", but this implicit understanding won't be there anymore when the Australian says "it's 11 in Australia then, I won't be awake". Similarly, if you travel, it's much easier to adapt to a similar sleeping cycle in a country you're going to by going to sleep at the same literal time that you would go to sleep in your home country. If you go to sleep at 10PM in America, then to adapt to English time, going to sleep at 10PM there will work just fine. Your phone's alarms will adapt and work fine too for instance. And even further, if you move from one city to another within the same country, how do you know the business hours have changed? In all of Australia you work from 9AM to 5PM if you work a regular job. So if you go from say, Sydney to Melbourne or Melbourne to Adelaide, what's going to alert you to the fact that business hours are different where you are now? What granularity do we have on these "business hour zones". Same thing with schools. While universal time would make it easier to physically *know* what time it is in another country, in doing so it makes that knowledge much less useful.
So it would basically be worse than the current system, certain parts of the world would change the date in de middle of the day making a logistical mess, not only that but I would remain as cumbersome if not more to call a relative in another country, and when you are a tourist you need to learn the workhours of the place you are in, but sure, we can gloss over those issues and just say "we humans hate changing out habits".
Another issue with changing is that most factories and the production lines therein were set up to use imperial measurements and it wouldve been costly to change it all over to the metric system. Nowadays it might actually be easier to swap over to metric system since tools and stuff arent so difficult to procure as they were in the industrial revolution, if one doesnt worry about cost. So when wondering why we use the imperial system, its a combo of costs, and habits.
I believe a few of the bigger US companies already use Metric (IIRC, IBM does). I think they even cited making the switch, while costly, ultimately paid off in many ways.
@@Buffalo_Soldier That all sounds familiar to 2002 when the € was introduced and all our national currencies weren't used anymore. Some countries had it easy to adapt since the exchange rate was easy to calculate (like Germany 1€ = 1.95583 DM). In France it was like 1€ = 7.xxx Franc and way mroe complicated in your daily routines. For about 1-2 years nearly all shops had price tags in old and new currency. Up to maybe 5-10 years people were sometimes talking about the old currency and how expensive something would've have been calculated in the old currency. Nowadays nobody speaks about it anymore. The time span you could pay with both currencies was just 3 month iirc.
It honestly also Makes no sense for us to change. Average American Perspective. "My taxes have gone up, and the road signs are different. So why did we do this again?" There is no Benefit to the average American while they have to front all of the costs. In the US All major roads have a sign to dictate the Mile of road you are on. There is one every. Single. Mile. To Change those all and to Place them more frequently (as Kilometers are smaller) Would be a HUGE cost. And in the end Nothing changes for the average person. We never have to convert to Metric. Our country is fucking huge. Its a relatively small number of people who deal with anything international, and an even smaller number of these people who deal with things on an international level who deal with measurements. So TLDR Average Americans would get 0 benefit from the metric system while being forced to pay for the conversion.
I think this solves one huge problem but creates more new ones. Night shift may have to deal with the date change in the middle of their “day” but psychologically they see the sun rise too. The brain accepts the new day as tangibly different than what came before. The only way around the date change happening in daylight is to say when one day ends and the next begins is a floating midnight. Which is exactly what the current time zones do now! Perhaps you could expand the current time zone borders this way though. Say North America agrees midnight is 06:00. This keeps daytime the same date, except in the Arctic. How would you notate the hours between 0 and 6 to denote North American date or UTC date? Most of us are familiar with an overnight flight that arrives the next date has +1 after arrival time. Would we say 00:01 +1 or maybe 00+01 to say we call this Monday (North America) but it’s +1 or Tuesday (UTC). Say New Zealand has midnight at 12:00, does Monday (NZ) morning workday get notated starting at 21:00 -1 or 21-00 to say it’s -1 or really Sunday (UTC). That’s the only way I see to make this work but honestly how complicated was that explanation? The issue of when is it ok to call some other place revolves around when is their midnight. And that’s more math and +1 or -1. I think my head hurts. I’d love to see it work but I think these concepts left too many people with a deer in the headlight look. There is though some precedence for redefining our concept of what say 9 o’clock means. In the Ottoman Empire many remote areas counted hours from sunset so after 12 hours more or less it was sunrise and count the next 12. Then the railroad arrived and railroad time became the new time. Counting up the hours from noon and midnight instead of day and night. So we can change our way of counting the hour but the day itself I question. It would be a new phenomenon without cultural precedent.
It's kind of pointless to unify the world's time so you don't have to worry about what time someone else is, just to remember that their day works at different times than yours. (I don't speak English, I used the translator, sorry for any grammar problems)
This is actually worse for communication. With timezones I can just ask someone "what time is it right now?", calculate the difference with mine and use that number to know when it's an appropriate time to text them. While with universal time I have no such easy reference and instead must ask something like "hey, when do you go to sleep on average?"
Knowing one's timezone doesn't let you know when they're available. Sure, you could guess assuming "normal" working hours, but not everyone follows that (e.g. for all the people who work from 9:00-17:00, there are plenty who instead work from 6:00-14:00 or 12:00-20:00; this isn't even accounting for night shift workers). Even if one's schedule is known, individual communication preferences still aren't represented: one person might like to be contacted in the morning, another in the afternoon right after work, and yet another around midnight. If you want to find out when someone wants to be texted, just ask them directly, no roundabout schedule reverse-engineering required.
You yourself just demonstrated why universal time is better. You mentioned 2 or 3 steps in finding a good time to call someone and just one for universal time. In practice, I would already know or quickly Google that America wakes up at say 0800 UTC and China at say 1600 UTC and therefore to do a call with them both it needs to be at 1700 UTC. As stated, some will still work 9-5, others will change to 4-12, but it'll still be during daylight. Speaking of daylight, we can circumvent DST by shifting business hours instead of shifting the clocks twice a year. This would allow individuals and countries who don't want to or need to observe daylight saving to avoid it altogether.
This doesn’t make sense, because knowing it’s 10pm in Beijing helps me know they’re likely heading to bed. If it’s 3 where I am and where they are, I have no way of gauging if they’re likely awake or not
@@MelkisgoedvoorJan knowing how late it is isn't useless, because knowing someone's sun went down (because it's around 10pm there) helps me understand they're getting ready for bed. If it's 3 here, 3 there, it's weird
@@daniagirl1 no its a fact and you can do things if you cant remember just have something on a device i dont get it you have to be eating too much mcdonalds everyday, btw that causes dementia
how do you know what time of day it is without knowing what time it is? The only real difference is that instead of remembering a +- difference you remember the midday hour. You still have to memorize a special time value per timezone
Now: Don't know what time it is or what time of day it is. UTC: Don't know what time of day it is. Now: Look up the current time (or timezone) and do math to figure out how many hours different they are. UTC: Look up their business hours and know where they are in their day.
Yeeting timezone altogether seems foolish. Localizing time makes sense because then we need to change a lot of other things. Lets take textbooks for example. Teaching a child about breakfast or day schedules is usually related to time. In our current system, with time fixed to the location, the book can say 8:00 AM is time for breakfast or whatever, but changing the system to UTC makes it hard to tie time to activities unless you make a bunch of textbooks for different regions. Also, changing the way we express time doesn't change the fact that if you are calling someone across the planet, you still break your sleep schedule. Honestly, the current system isn't bad as long as you just use the system and express what timezone you are using. The problem isn't necessarily the system, but rather its lack of standardness. We just need to change it from 27 timezones with non straight lines to 24 timezones with straight lines (excluding minor detours to keep a city in one timezone since having half a city in one timezone while the other half in the other would be too problematic). Timezones give some standardization to people's days and concepts of planning with time. Hidden context is related to time that would need to be recreated if we went to UTC timezones. Based on UTC time, 1 AM in Miami means something different than 1 AM in Tokyo and when relating someone doing something at that time, you then have to clarify where the events are taking place or what time of day it was for someone to be able to determine if the activity was normal while timezones allow that context to be implicitly communicated. So rather than changing everything and rewriting how all human culture perceives time, just alter the current system to be more clear
straight time zones are even worse idea imagine driving from your home to work in the same country, and having to change time. 1 country should have 1 timezone unless its big enough like russia or usa also 27 time zones do have a practical reason to exist
@@wojtekpolska1013 Explain why 27 time zones with 24 hours making sense. As for the time change, as you point out, people already do it. Right now, our timezones are extremely confusing because they have so many warps. If you were to look at a map right now and try and figure out timezones for places on the map, your just as likely to be right as wrong. Like the example that most of Eastern Europe fits in one time zone and the the one next to it is two hours ahead. The delineations make almost no sense. Besides, your talking about a minority problem, not a majority problem. Most people don't like on timezone borders. The majority live in areas far away from timezone lines. And if a city is divided by that line, the line would go around the city, because that makes common sense. The timezone change issue is rare in the US, Russia, and other countries that span multiple time zones. And people can adapt to those issues. Its not rocket science to just move up or down your morning schedule. The system right now is decently confusing and modifying it to make things more logical is a net gain.
@@joshsolders5543 The reason for UTC+14 seems more logical when you look at what falls there. You have the counties to the West who are your neighbors and probably the one's you interact with the most. Then you have the countries to the East, who are hours of flight away and you don't have a lot of interaction with. Who would you rather share a date with? On a global scale, it doesn't make any sense, but on a more local one, it does.
@@rolin6781 I undestand the point, however, that line of thinking leads to the problem we are discussing. The idea that timezones go around countries and the like are for local reasons rather than actual clarity of time. Internal politics just leads us to warping the lines so much it comes into question how well they actually divide time. I'm not going to pretend I understand every implication of altering the timezones, but I will say this much. Having a timezone offset by a half hour is very complicated compared to the rest of the system cause the rule generally is its segmented into hours. Your average person will miscalculate the time due to this rule of thumb unless they are looking at a computer calculation. The confusion with these 30 min or 45 min timezones is much greater than the rest of the system and if someone was to reformat timezones, I am certain those would be the first things to go.
The time isn't just for setting up appointments. It's also used to denote where a place is in its day night cycle. Under the UTC system if I wanted to call my vendor in the UK, sure.... I would know what time it is there. But that information is totally useless to me since I need to know if their office is open. I'm still going to need to convert some kind of time zone to figure out if I'm calling during business hours.
I agree in the case of calling your family or friends. You need to know if 13 is in the middle of the night or not for them, but in the case of business hours most people google before they call (and they don’t need to convert the google result) or if you’re a regular, one can simply memorize it. This way there’s no need to convert it if you’re calling on a vacation.
@@axelelmfeldt6085 a fair point but honestly when I'm calling a vendor or a customer I don't Google their hours. I just keep in mind what time it is on the us east coast or in the case of Dubai or the uk I may have to Google the time zone. The facility may or may not have their hours listed on Google but I know my contact leaves at 6 just like I do. My main point is that this only solves a potential confusion of setting up an appointment but it would actually make the most common use of time worse. That is, telling what time of day it is in reference to the day night cycle. Which is how we use the time of day most frequently. I just don't see this idea as being all that useful. In any case if I need to call someone on the other side of the world. My aunt for instance, I'm going to need to know if I'm calling her in the middle of the night. The only way I could do that would be to look up the UTC sunrise time in her location and lo and behold we are back at the exact same problem.... The earth spins and it's always going to be a bit of a pain in the ass. We all live our lives according to the day and night. We really can't get around that
@@justintime5021 yeah we would all just look up various locations' time of day instead of looking up the time zone. And also the way ur able to keep in mind the time in different places, u would instead just learn to keep in mind the time of day there. But ur right, there would be a lot of symmetry between this and what we do now. But at least there wouldn't be a mess of different time zones anymore, it would still take some unavoidable mental effort but it would be simpler.
@@janek8195 it.. it LITTERLY would NOT be simpler.. it just changes names... infact, timezones are EASIER, in this case you only need to google "timezone name" and you get the current time, and you have the offest to your own timezone with that.. if you haev ONE timezone you would need to check " what time of day is it in X in relation to my place" which would give you something like "12am in X is equivalent to 5pm in Y" now that woudl help you, but its not SIMPLER timezones are gone but the MESS of different times is NOT because 12am in x is NOT 12am in Y in terms of ANYTHING, sun, office hours, heck even DATE may be different despite it being the EXACT same Time, it makes it even worse honestly
@@weberman173 well we would all adjust to it, I think the transition might be hard for ppl but once ppl were used to it it would definitely be easier. Google could just provide a simple tool, like the one on this website www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html and u would just type a time and see what the sun does then, in different parts of the world.
I feel like that would just make things more confusing as, instead of simply clarifying which 11PM you want to call, you'd have to say something along the lines of "Oh, when do you usually sleep" and then remember their specific sleeping hours rather than one number.
Firstly, 'outweighs', not 'outways'. Secondly, there's no disadvantage in using it, other than the inconvenience of switching. The time will be the same for everyone, and it will solve the misunderstandings and messy conversions.
HUMAN-512 Not robot Ok. Let’s say we do switch to a universal time. It works pretty well for those who plan their meetings beforehand. Now, try randomly calling your friend in another country for a casual conversation. With only one time to refer to, you’d either have to memorise their waking hours or refer to some second system that tells you where the sun is in relation to their country.
@@drone_better7757 How would you express business hours that pass through days. You make it seem like it's no big deal, however it is actually a massive problem that everyone would face.
Not everyone in Western China has just gotten used to using a laggy timezone, actually. I think you made a few assumptions there - it's an honest mistake to make, but you should never make assumptions in geopolitics. Anyway; it's true that, *officially*, the western provinces use the same timezone as Beijing, but a lot of people have actually adopted local time zones instead of properly adjusting. Businesses may post their hours as 7-5, but most people will still refer to it (and think of it!) as 9-7. It seems like it would be easy enough to get people to adjust to a new time zone, but China is actually a counter-example that shows how stubborn humans really are - so even if we *officially* adopted UTC, a lot of places might continue to use their local time zone anyhow.
I like to compare this to the months of the year. Different parts of the world have opposite weathers during different months, yet we all use the same gregorian calendar. We simply associate different weathers with different months. We associate summer with june-august while people in places like south africa associate that with winter.
That's far less of an adjustment than time having a completely different meaning in every major global region and having to do maths to translate into your time. Time having a shared meaning is more important than everyone seeing the same numbers on the clock
I agree with the colored hat guy, that just makes everything more complicated. The bigger problem when coordinating between multiple places is the work and sleep schedules of those places, which this wouldn't change. It would actually make it even more difficult because if it's 9am everywhere, there's no easy reference to know who will be awake or asleep in different places. And even if you wanted to look up what part of the day it is somewhere else, what would the answer be if all times are the same? It could be something like "3 hours after solar noon" but that would just be local time zones again. I do see value in using UTC for coordinating international meetings, in order to reduce confusion on which time is meant. However, most (well-written) software does this automatically anyway. So if I schedule a meeting at 9am EST, it will be stored as 14:00 UTC, and for someone in Germany it will be converted to their local time of 3pm.
The whole point of the time system we have now is to tell when the hell to get up and go to sleep on a day-to-day basis. The UTC idea might work if nobody moves around and just stays in their home town forever, but if you travel anywhere you'll have to ask all the locals "when does the sun rise?" "When do they serve breakfast here?" "When is the football game?", because all the times in the day that you'd normally do stuff will have shifted. The system we have now literally solves so many confusing issues by saying, "ok, if you go this far West then you'll have to shift your schedule by 1 hour", and that's pretty damn easy no matter how many insignificant remote islands are on whatever the hell time schedule they want in the South Pacific. China only works because it's a 3 hour difference and people can usually cope with that without needing a calculator and a map, also 90% of their population lives in the East with not much reason to move West and mess up their own schedule. The UTC "solution" is favored by eggheads who can't see far enough out of their bureaucratic vision blinders to see that not every problem can be solved by making it "simpler", and that's why most scientific institutions full of eggheads use UTC anyways with no bother to the rest of us.
This is the most ridiculous tangent, the internet, books, and I'm assuming your eyes can all give you that information. UTC just makes everything more convenient
It really doesn't make things simpler. Just fucking talk about how time shifts. I have never seen a single person having a problem with that except, as OP stated, eggheads who'd probably struggle with 1. Grade level Math and can't smear some butter on their toasts without an attack plan. Using UTC for Space and Science stuff is alright, I guess, don't know enough about that. But what I know is that we can't just decide to fuck up our time, which is already relative, and expect people to be able to shift as quickly and not just use the old time system that NEXT TO EVERYONE IS ACCUSTOMED TO.
The most helpful part of timezones is knowing whether it is day or night somewhere else and understanding business hours so no Universal time does not work. If I am trying to get a hold of a company in Australia from the US I want to know whether or not it is a reasonable time or not. Memorizing whether or not it is day or night will be annoying.
You still have to remember that. I live in Russia, UTC +5. I play milsim, and to remember when our OP starts I have to remember that I live: UTC +5, BST +4, CEST +3 but CET +4 (fuck DST), AEDT -6 and I still don't remember the American timezones, I just vaguely know they are ~12 hours from me.
@@freyawion5337 Yeah but if I look up Time in Australia and it says 18:00 I will have to do the difference calculation as it is 18:00 in my town but currently I can look up the time in Australia not having to do the calculations. I don't have to remember the time zones of every country. Not to mention Specifying time zones is not that hard.
@@Eyebrows842 you could look up "business time in Australia" or something. Won't have to know what time it is exactly if you are trying to call someone, just if they are awake or not.
but then that time isnt meaningful, you dont know at which point in their day they are in. are they just going to bed? having breakfast? is this the middle of the day to them??
@@TheBallinCat43IsReal it's much easier to check what time it is somewhere else when there are time zones than have to try and wrap your head around a different time system, and time would still bend around international borders, because people would tend to follow the working hours of the country they're in
Not to mention, even if u don't know their political time zone, the easy math is one hour per 15 degrees, so you still can call them at what phyically should be their 1pm and can be pretty certain you are not calling at an innappropriate time.
While this works in local areas, as seen in China this causes a diffrent issue: where you can schedule a national test for 12 and everyone in their time zone can go to their test at their noon, under a single time people would now be taking tests hours earlier or later since time doesn’t match up with the day (this is an actual problem in China). Not to mention that there’s just as much (if not more) confusion, with the effort being switched from merely knowing the local time (as the time will always roughly match the day) to relearning how the time corresponds to the day in every time zone.
>as the time will always roughly match the day You must not have traveled much. If we had regular timezones, that would only be kind of true if it’s either near an equinox (which happen twice every year) or the equator. Since we don’t have straight timezones, that’s even worse.
technology has already solved this problem in that computers and phones can keep track of all the time zones - and if you personally prefer you can run on UTC or have UTC on your clock as a second time zone.
@@nthn- ya but everyone using UTC for everything isn't ideal either. UTC and local time serve different purposes. I think as we globalize more people will be using UTC more often but people will still use local time for local needs.
This is like saying "we should all just speak one language". It might be easier, and standardisation into one dialect did work in a number of countries in the past, but you have to either be patient or get real draconian about enforcement. UTC was only recently invented, so there's hope.
this switch is a lot easier. Additionally, theres a lot of cultural and historical reasons to preserve as many languages as possible, a problem time zones dont have.
Fun fact, not everyone in a particular locality wakes/sleeps/eats on the same schedule anyways. Because I work an evening shift job and stay up after work instead of getting up early I'm pretty much doing my daily activities close to the times someone in Guam would (on average)...even though I live on Manitoba (North American Central Time). But I set all my computers to Saskatchewan Time (North American Central Time without Daylight Savings Time) because I developed the habit after the U.S. and Canada changed when DST starts and ends...this is the one thing I can blame on George Bush... Also some people are always eating no matter what time it is (unless they are asleep)...this is also why they are so fat... ^_- web21.moonie.ca/People_2007_01_08/why%20you%20get%20so%20many%20calls%20during%20dinner%20%5E_%5E.jpg
Here's why it doesn't work. It's going to cause a lot of the same issues but in different mindset. so instead of having to know their timezone I have to know their opening hours. Imagine how confusing it would be having to travel to other countries.
@@ubernerrd so instead of having your clock automatically set to the time zone, you have to look up when breakfast places usually open then you check what time museums close, then you have to check what time the dinner/bar place closes. All of this can be avoided by being normal and having time zones as everyone has a rough estimate of when those things open and close from their own experience
I feel like this makes things much worse for meetings and calling people. Because right now I can look up when it will be 3pm in say, California, and I know that it will be daylight if I make a call there. However, under your proposed system, 3pm is meaningless to me because now I have to look up what time it is daylight in california for them, it just seems more convoluted than simply figuring out 3 over there is 6 where I am.
In my opinion, instead of completely ditching Time Zones clock we use both The Universal Time and The Time Zones clock at the same time into everyday live. The standard Time Zones used for something within a city with AM PM format and just represent night and day. The Universal Time must be use for long distance transportation/communication or a meeting so important that all parties must be on the same page on what time must be held.
Except this doesn't work. Do you know how often I've seen an arranged event with the given times off by an hour, because an American converted their local time to BST instead of UTC?
@@Seb135-e1i Isn't because America like to use outdated imperial measurements system? Beside this video his propose is one Universal Time system that every Nations and peoples will be using.
biggest problem with this will be writing out dates, could you image hitting midnight at noon the the rest of the day is now the next. It would definitely cause a lot of confusion.
It wouldn't work that way because at midnight it will still be the same day. His theory is saying that if it hits midnight at noon then 12:00 P.M Afternoon would really be the next day
And if it's 12:00 and in London is mid-day, how am I supposed to know if it's ok to call my friends in California or Australia? They would probably be sleeping. The working hours is fine, but it would take a long time until people would understand the time which they are supposed to contact people on the other side of the globe. I believe it would not only cause more confusion, but it would also cause a lot of problems in IT infrastructures (like converting time from databases from the old time zones and the universal one) and also in scientific apparatus, that would have to be reset with other time - *all around the world* There are advantages, but also huge disadvantages, just like trying to convert from year 2019 to year 12019 (which is an even stupider idea). I'm ok with changes, but those should not have more disadvantages than the current systems (like seriously, we should ditch the imperial system for good and get to use the better metric system).
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I don't think with the proper planning, that changing the time system would cause massive problems as pretty much all computers and anything scientific is already running on UTC. Concerning your argument about not knowing what time to call someone on the other side of the planet: Yes UT doesn't solve that issue, but that issue exists with time zones as well. If you don't know how many hours a country's solar time is ahead or behind your time, you have no way of knowing when to call. As I've said, UT doesn't solve that, but it doesn't make it worse either.
As a night shift guy, I've always thought of it as simply adjusting the start of the day and that's it. So morning in London would still be morning in Detroit. The time would still be 6:00, just the position of the sun/moon would be different, but both locations would be awake. There are multiple ways to solve those types of issues and this is merely the way I've come up with. Already used to seeing "night" at strange hours, eating breakfast at strange hours, dinner at strange hours. Changing the time to match those wouldn't be of any difference to me. Edit: Yes, I realize that this is an unthinkable stance to take, and it's rediculous to even entertain the idea.
"The entire world", as though it's not a single country sized supremacist death cult of anti-education yokels that's the problem. And I should know, I was born here. Also Myanmar and Liberia, but without the death cult and they'll have way more of a reason to switch.
But what if someone says from the other side of the world to call at 10, and then you get a call at what was 1 in the morning? Wouldn’t that be the same problem as the start of the video?
You just say it's night-time at 10,then the other person tries another time, Rn 10 can mean your 10 or their 10 which is basically the UT" daytime or nighttime ?" . People think of their own time when somebody says an hour .so somebody saying "call you at 10" immediately triggers a red flag of "but its nighttime " in an universal time world ,instead of being ignorant or being confused about "which 10 "
@@pppriest3206 which means you haven’t solved the problem. All you’ve done is swap “what time is it in Sydney” for “what time does the sun rise in Sydney”
@@raver377 Seems to me if you are moving on from the time when everyone didn't have computers in their pocket that could tell the minority of people that still work in agriculture when to plant stuff. Instead moving to the point time is just a way to coordinate and plan events no longer being any more to find out when the next season is predicted than to do the same for the next solar eclipse. Perhaps would be better to scrap the weird mix of duodecimal, sexagesimal etc and just use an intuitive base 10 system to measure time too.
Traveling like this sounds like hell. Imagine you fly to Sydney and your plane lands at 16:30 universal time, and everything is dark. How do you find out what time it is? The only answer you can get is "It's 16:30" or "It's nighttime" unless they have a graph or 10 minutes to explain what the local day/night cycle is. We'd also have to completely rethink our concept of dates. For a lot of people the date would change in the middle of the day during work hours. For universal time to work it would be much easier if everyone simply had 2 clocks, 1 for local time and 1 for universal. And then everyone just specifies UTC when making international appointments. Everyone would know UTC by heart as they're used to seeing it next to their local time. And when traveling/reading/communicating people would still be able to understand the different day/night cycles of other countries as local time still exists in parallel.
Just open up your weather app and it says when the sun rises and sets. Open up GPS and it shows when every nearby business opens and when it closes. We already have the solution for this built into our pockets.
Except. That this would actually cause even more Confusion and Misunderstandings. Not just in the Short Term. But also in the Long Term. You See. Right now. With the Timezones. Sure. There is a Chance that if I got an Appointment in another Country. I might miss it. I have to Learn that 18 o Clock in UTC+2 is not the same 18 o Clock as my Home which is UTC -2 But. You actually Forget something there. Because while you might not get this kind of Misunderstanding anymore. You get Different ones. Because you no longer have a Reference Point for which Time Service Hours are actually Exist. Suddenly you got someone from a Country where Service Hours are 13-01 O Clock. Who then stands at a Shop which is Closed because he ended up in a Country that has Service Hours from 18 to 09 o Clock. You dont even know where the Next Day would Count. Because every Single Country would have to Basicly Decide on a time of the Day where the "Day" Changes to the next Date. Or you would need to say that we Just Fuck some Countries because we say all Countries Change day at 00:00 even if that is basicly Midday for them. Thus creating a Complete Clusterfact on Legal Matters. Because every Single Employer basicly has his Working Hours Split onto 2 Days. Universal Time Sounds like a Nice and Easy Alternative. But it really is not. Because the only thing you do. Is effectively Changing what the Person needs to Look up. Currently you need to Look up the Time Difference if you Work Across a Border. In Universal Time. You instead would need to look up the Local Service and Event Times the moment your not in your Home Country anymore. Because. The Example you used. That someone Basicly Rings your Phone at Midnight cause he didnt Realize it was a Different Time. Can Happen just as well in Universal Time. Because the other Person might Simply not have any Idea which Time the Nighttime is in the other Country. And in Fact Universal Time Misunderstanding might be Worse. Because you suddenly Stop lacking an Easy Reference Point. Any Country will have its own Service Hours. And there wont even be a Universal System like the Timezones to basicly give everyone a Rough Idea. Meaning that you have to Actively Look it up for each Single Place. Currently. You set your Watch to the Local Time. Or in the Age of a Smartphone simply have your Smartphone Adjust to Local Time by itself. And Bam. You can tell its Morning or Evening and that this should be around Service Hours etc etc. In Universal Time. You cant do that. You have to basicly look up what the Times even Mean in this Place you are now. Because you have no Reference Point at all. Its 13:00 around the World. But you got no Idea what 13:00 even is in the Place you are before you look it up Seperately. :)
No because it will still lead to confusion as a person in uk noon needs to figure out if it would be day time or night time nz as it is both 1200hrs but if most countries have their noon when the sun is at its apex then you can tell if it’s night or day time
I think if we all were to switch to using UTC of everything, we would need to invent a second system for keeping track of how advanced the day is in what country. If I want to start a conversation with my friend in India, I can just look up what time it is there to be able to guess, whether or not it would be a good time to call him right now. In the case of India, I just take an analog clock, turn it upside down and read off the time. If all countries were to start using UTC, the local time would no longer give me any information about whether my friend is likely to be asleep or not. I would need a second system which gives me smt like the angle of the sun in the sky, which would just add more complexity. I don't think the system we have right now is the best system you could come up with but UTC has it's downsides too
The second system is much simpler than knowing the angle of the sun. Instead of looking up the time, look up their business hours. Now your business hours begin at 0900 and your friend in India's begin at 1400. If you want to know what time of day it is there, add five hours to the current time and whatever time of day that is for you, that's what time it is for him. For example, if it's 1200 and you want to know what your friend is doing, just think about what you're doing at 1700. You're getting off work, and so is he.
@@AmericanDash seems like a very irritating solution, for something that most people barely have any trouble with right now. like that aunty thing, of course you use HER time when you the exception further away... the things he wants to fix, can be simple fixed by just adding universal time to business appointsment en means time-zone crossing travels. No need to irritate to much withing a time zone.. the origin of national time zones was just that, having one time to know when your train leaves and arrives. just have a standaard time for plains and your done... then anyone who travels has an idea of where universal time is, and if you really have multiple cross-time zones contacts, you can start using that time with those contact..
@@AmericanDash What if it's a business that currently starts in the afternoon (say, 3pm) and closes before midnight (11pm) like a restaurant? If that's my proxy for local operating times I'll be off by six hours. Businesses aren't consistent and adding more maths to something people already struggle with isn't helpful. Timezones by another name are still timezones.
Yeah, every country would think like that if this was decided, "why do I have to follow the british time?". Ideological countries would harshly protest an universal time unless its centered around their own country
Yeaa but with universal time you loose the information what part of the day it is in other places. For example I will know that it's 2AM in county X but I would have to guess if it's working time or afternoon or midnight over there.
I think the best compromise would be for any time-sensitive, spanning across timezones or otherwise confusing cases to be expressed in UTC. Like flight departure/arrival times (as they already do), delivery times, meetings, etc. Maybe to avoid confusion and to keep everything brief, we could use the same way pilots use to indicate UTC (aka Zulu) time. By appending the letter z at the end of the time to indicate universal coordinated time. E.g. 18:45z
To be fair, not so many people need to constantly know what time it is somewhere else, you'd be causing an hindrance to the majority to solve the problems of a few
@@UnderYourPresence with ongoing globalisation it becomes more and more important for everyone just think about it in 1300 it wouldnt be to any importance to anyone what time it is in any other part of the world because of the lack of communication. it doesnt matter for me what time it is where you are when a message from me to you or from you to me takes weeks. but in modern times with better and better communication it suddenly matters, granted it only impacts a few people directly but it impacts almost everyone indirectly
Maybe you could do a compromise of creating a few big time zones, e.g. have it be 03:00 everywhere in the Americas except Alaska, 09:00 everywhere in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, 15:00 everywhere in the Indian Subcontinent, the 'stans, the Far East, and Australia, and 21:00 everywhere in the Polynesian Triangle, Alaska, and the extreme east of Russia. With clock time being more or less synced to solar time in Bogota, Columbia, N'Djamena, Chad, Hanoi, Vietnam, and Nome, Alaska That way there would be a simple and easy way to calculate the time anywhere in the world, but the clock time would still more-or-less represent the solar time; as long as you were at a reasonably warm latitude, 00:00 would always be nighttime, 06:00 would be morning, 12:00 would be daytime, and 18:00 would be afternoon/evening.
People should use UTC more, and that would be the logical first step IMO. "Stream starts at 8:00 UTC", "This article was posted on satruday 23:35 UTC" and so on
My idea is to not replace the time zones (for now) but to create an "Internet Standard time" that people can chose to start to follow. we could have things like dual clocks on our phones that show local time and Internet standard time and people can chose to start using it. then online events can be advertised by internet standard time and people will slowly start using it more and more.
4 года назад
The thing which already exists and is called Swatch Internet Time? xD
