Time Zones are outdated, why don't we all switch over to 1 time standard

[gotsmack]

I don't understand what the point of time zones are. In this age of instantaneous communication with almost anyone in the world, why not just have 1 time zone for every one and countries can decide on if they would want to divide regions into areas with later business hours.

Lets say we all use GMT, so a lunch only restaurant in NYC would be normal open from 10 AM to 3 PM Eastern is now open from 5 AM to 10 AM GMT. Same hours, except you're using GMT now not Eastern.

This would make it easier for people who travel and do business across the country and internationally. So instead of trying to figure out what time zone some small town in the mid west is in you can just see from their website that they are open from XX to XX and it wouldn't be an issue because you're on the same time. Same thing if you wanted to call your cousin in another country, no calculations needed.

EDIT: some of you are misunderstanding the question. I am proposing everyone operate under something like GMT and they would keep their normal business hours at the same time of day that they normally would if they operated on GMT. So you will not have to get up in the middle of the night for business hours unless that is what you normally do.

EDIT 2: Some of you are still confused. You will not lose any daylight hours while you are awake. You are just saying what time it is in GMT instead of local time. So if you lived in NYC, you would say it's 1 PM GMT instead of 8 AM Eastern .

 

[kt]

Uhh, okay.

 

[Mixolydian]

I've always felt that the world should all be on the same time.

 

[Markbnj]

Uhh, okay.

This.

Ok, what the hell, I'll take the question seriously: although the wide availability of artificial lighting has freed humans to treat the borders between day and night less strictly, most people still generally sleep when its dark and wake when its light, and our bodies have been tuned to that cycle for many thousands of years. If we were to follow your scheme, one part of the world (the U.S. gets my vote) would have things arranged sort of within 3-4 hours of what they should be, but the rest of the world would be getting up in the middle of the night, and going to bed in the middle of the day.

Not to mention that figuring out "what time do they get up in France?" wouldn't be that much easier than figuring out "What time is it in France?"

 

[Capt Caveman]

Beyond stupid

 

[BoomerD]

Beyond stupid

So...the ATOT norm?

 

[IronWing]

Decimal time!

 

[JEDIYoda]

I don't understand what the point of time zones are. In this age of instantaneous communication with almost anyone in the world, why not just have 1 time zone for every one and countries can decide on if they would want to divide regions into areas with later business hours.

Lets say we all use GMT, so a lunch only restaurant in NYC would be normal open from 10 AM to 3 PM Eastern is now open from 5 AM to 10 AM.

This would make it easier for people who travel and do business across the country and internationally. So instead of trying to figure out what time zone some small town in the mid west is in you can just see from their website that they are open from XX to XX and it wouldn't be an issue because you're on the same time. Same thing if you wanted to call your cousin in another country, no calculations needed.

Did you not know that we have our own time zone in these forums??

 

[gotsmack]

This.

Ok, what the hell, I'll take the question seriously: although the wide availability of artificial lighting has freed humans to treat the borders between day and night less strictly, most people still generally sleep when its dark and wake when its light, and our bodies have been tuned to that cycle for many thousands of years. If we were to follow your scheme, one part of the world (the U.S. gets my vote) would have things arranged sort of within 3-4 hours of what they should be, but the rest of the world would be getting up in the middle of the night, and going to bed in the middle of the day.

Not to mention that figuring out "what time do they get up in France?" wouldn't be that much easier than figuring out "What time is it in France?"

I never said that the world would have to operate on the same schedule. If A business normally opens at 10AM in NYC they open up at the same time of day except they call it 5 AM GMT or whatever and everyone uses the same standard. A business in Chicago that has the same hours now opens at 4 AM GMT

 

[IronWing]

GMT, that's commie time.

 

[Markbnj]

I never said that the world would have to operate on the same schedule. If A business normally opens at 10AM in NYC they open up at the same time of day except they call it 5 AM GMT or whatever and everyone uses the same standard. A business in Chicago that has the same hours now opens at 4 AM GMT

Which has zero advantages of any kind.

 

[gotsmack]

Which has zero advantages of any kind.

I listed the advantages in the first post. It has mostly to do with eliminating the confusion of what time a meeting is. If I have to call in to the NYC office at 8 AM and I am in Tokyo, there is no conversion.

 

[who?]

In the TV show "Jag" they called it zulu time. Apparently the higher ups don't want to worry about conversion errors.
During daylight savings eastern time is only four hours behind GMT (GMT doesn't go on daylight savings).

 

[SKORPI0]

It’s About Time: UTC, GMT, ESI and eDiscovery :\
3 Reasons Why eDiscovery Data Should be Processed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

What is UTC?
UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is the primary time standard by which the world regulates time. Computer servers, email systems, online services and other computer based systems that rely on having a universally accepted time are based on the UTC standard. The Network Time Protocol, designed to synchronize the clocks of computers over the Internet, also encodes times using the UTC system. Think of UTC as the “baseline” or “true north” for ESI when it comes to standardized time.
UTC and GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) are essentially the same time zone but GMT is not as specific and precise as UTC. For example, GMT can be expressed in 12 hour expression (a.m. or p.m.) where UTC is always a 24 hour expression. UTC also accounts for sub second corrections and that is why it is implemented as the international time standard for computer based systems.
All local time zones are offset from the UTC standard by a whole number of hours (UTC−12 to UTC+14), but a few are offset by 30 or 45 minutes (for example Nepal Standard Time is UTC +05:45). Some local time zones use daylight saving time for part of the year, typically by changing clocks by an hour. All of these, again, are encoded in ESI as an offset from the UTC time standard.
- See more at: http://www.d4discovery.com/2014/02/...one-early-in-ediscovery/#sthash.wkCpq53f.dpuf

 

[Markbnj]

I listed the advantages in the first post. It has mostly to do with eliminating the confusion of what time a meeting is. If I have to call in to the NYC office at 8 AM and I am in Tokyo, there is no conversion.

You've just changed the question from "What time is it in Tokyo?" to "What time do they get up in Tokyo?" Nobody is going to call into a meeting in NY in the middle of the night just because the clocks in both places happen to point to the same number.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

All timekeeping is a convention and for humans it's been about day and night for thousands of years the sin comes up in the am and sets in the pm and polar regions obviously would be exceptions. Why pointlessly require a new system?

 

[jlee]

Let's eliminate daylight savings time. That'd make more sense.

 

[who?]

All timekeeping is a convention and for humans it's been about day and night for thousands of years the sin comes up in the am and sets in the pm and polar regions obviously would be exceptions. Why pointlessly require a new system?

I don't think the sin stops in the pm.

 

[Rakehellion]

I don't understand what the point of time zones are. In this age of instantaneous communication with almost anyone in the world, why not just have 1 time zone for every one and countries can decide on if they would want to divide regions into areas with later business hours.

In this age of instantaneous communication with almost anyone in the world, you can google "What time is it in Japan?" and quickly eliminate any confusion. Or better yet, download an app that does it for you.

 

[Matt1970]

Let's eliminate daylight savings time. That'd make more sense.

I am all for that.

 

[IGBT]

the earth is round..not flat.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

You've just changed the question from "What time is it in Tokyo?" to "What time do they get up in Tokyo?" Nobody is going to call into a meeting in NY in the middle of the night just because the clocks in both places happen to point to the same number.

Exactly. Sure, conversion now is a pain in the ass, but changing the clocks isn't going to change the fact that the sun rises in Tokyo 18 hours before it does in Los Angeles; I'm still going to need to do SOME sort of math to figure out whether or not they're currently at work or it's the middle of the night or whatever. And if I keep a standard "people work from 8-5" sense of time throughout the world, then I can look at what time it is in Tokyo and immediately know what time of day that correlates to without adding an additional layer of complexity.

 

[her209]

I agree OP. Get rid of time zones. Get rid of AM and PM. It makes things like scheduling easier. If you wanted to find out what time a business was open, you'd have to inquire about the hours, then determine the time zone relative to yours and do the conversion to get your local time. Without time zones, you'd inquire about the hours and that's it.

It'd save programmers having to code logic to correct for time zones. I recently was communicating with a vendor who is in a different time zone and Outlook would adjust the receive time of the e-mail on both ends, but when looking at the e-mail trail, it looked like it was all over the place because Outlook doesn't just times inside the e-mail body which included the replies.

 

[1sikbITCH]

I listed the advantages in the first post. It has mostly to do with eliminating the confusion of what time a meeting is. If I have to call in to the NYC office at 8 AM and I am in Tokyo, there is no conversion.

If you can't figure out what time to be at work it's because you're stupid. Not because time zones are "too confusing" lol.

 

[Mixolydian]

Let's eliminate daylight savings time. That'd make more sense.

No no no. Let's have DST year-round.