No Time Zones

[hismajesty]

Weird. Sun is usually up at around 6 or 6:30 AM here, and goes down at 6:30-7:30ish, give or take.

[Adron]

Haha, that seems weirder to me. You'd have to turn on the lights in the evening in the summer. And winter wouldn't be a dark season.

[hismajesty]

In the summer it stays out later, maybe to 8, that's why I said give or take.

[Joe[x86]]

3am and the sun is up? If that happened here I'd think Jesus was coming back or aliens were attacking or something.

Or you got medflighted to Antarctica for the heart attack the haluci..drugs gave you. The sun is up every second of the day on the summer.. tip of the tongue.. that one day. Of course, theirs is our winter (ours refering to northern hemispehere)

[Adron]

Summer stays up for a week or more down in Sweden. It must stay up for months in Antarctica. Though, for those who measure time in sun movement only, I guess those months are just a day.

[Grok]

Some of the posts in reply to this proposition have reaffirmed parts of my depressing view on humanity.  That is there is no hope for our own survival when left to choice.  The concept of time being a separate thing from the planet Earth is simple but causes our sun-worshippers discomfort.  They immediately reach for any and all barricades to throw up rather than exploring what might free them from their bindings.

I sure hope Daneel is working on that project he mentioned ... think he called it Gaia.

[Invert]

Some of the posts in reply to this proposition have reaffirmed parts of my depressing view on humanity.  That is there is no hope for our own survival when left to choice.  The concept of time being a separate thing from the planet Earth is simple but causes our sun-worshippers discomfort.  They immediately reach for any and all barricades to throw up rather than exploring what might free them from their bindings.

I agree with you on this and on having a global clock.
I also wish we used the metric system globally.

[Rule]

Did no-one read my post?  Time is not an absolute quantity.  Time for us is tied to our position and velocity!  Events do not happen at some universal time!  You will always need some reference time (frame), and have conversions, if you want to be precise.

[Arta]

That doesn't matter. Those things are true regardless of the method one uses to measure time. Perhaps another method would be simpler.

[Invert]

Did no-one read my post?  Time is not an absolute quantity.  Time for us is tied to our position and velocity!  Events do not happen at some universal time!  You will always need some reference time (frame), and have conversions, if you want to be precise.

I think we were just talking about simplifying things.

Edit -> Sorry, I did not read Artas post before hitting reply with quote to post this.

[Rule]

That doesn't matter. Those things are true regardless of the method one uses to measure time. Perhaps another method would be simpler.

There is a major flaw in the logic behind implementing this though -- and that does matter!  It is not progressive in the sense that it is getting closer to the way time should be perceived: it is moving farther away from it (in some ways).
We would be partly adopting one ignorant view of time over another.   

And would it really simplify things?  Wouldn't we be doing a lot of conversions in our head anyways?  (e.g. a statement could make sense 3:00 AM at location X, but not at 3:00 AM at location Y).

This ambiguity could be fixed by changing our schedules, so say, everywhere in the world we generally work from 9am-5pm, international time, etc.  Would people cope with that very well?

It would be progressive to stop thinking of time in terms of daylight, I agree.  Time has nothing to do with how bright it is outside.  I guess I'm afraid this could be taken too far: time isn't a completely independent quantity.

I actually like the idea in some ways.  I just wanted to point out that there are some very logical and rational objections to this proposal -- those that disagree with it are not necessarily mindlessly sentimental, as they seem to have been portrayed  .

[Explicit]

While we're on the topic of time, can anyone tell me what the 'AM' and 'PM' stand for WITHOUT looking it up?

[Rule]

yes.....?

[Topaz]

It's latin, something to do with the meridian.

[Zorm]

Can someone name an advantage to having a global clock? I sure haven't seen it yet.

Instead of having to translate between timezones you get to translate between locations. I rather doubt everyone in the world would enjoy sleeping at the same time and waking at the same time regardless of the position of the sun.

If you have global time but people wake at different hours in parts of the world you still have to translate between your location and their location when comparing times. 1PM here might mean the sun is up and its the middle of the afternoon but for someone else it could mean the sun is just rising. Where as with the system we have now if someone says 11:59PM its almost always safe to assume its the middle of the night and the sun is likely down or very low in the sky regardless of their location on Earth.

Sure you can say 'late at night' but thats not specific enough for any real use and so people will end up creating a relative phrase for every hour relative to the position of the sun or they just won't use it.