On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 08:23:25AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
On 02/11/2009 05:17 AM, Dave Sherohman wrote:
No, I think the much better idea would be to ditch timezones and put the
whole world on UTC. Get rid of DST and 12-hour clocks, too, while
you're at it. There is absolutely no real benefit to having the clock
say "7am" when you wake up and "11pm" when you go to sleep instead of
(assuming UTC-6) waking up at 1:00 (which, remember, represents the same
actual time as is currently called "7am" in that timezone), working
3-12, and going to bed at 19:00.
Of course time zones are a good idea. Humans are still diurnal and
like seeing the clock say "morning" when they wake up after a
night's sleep. A clock who's 00:00 is at what is now 06:00 would be
coherent with our nature.
I believe you have missed my point. There is nothing magical about
00:00 or 06:00 or whatever that makes it "morning". It is, IMO,
perfectly acceptable for "morning" to be from 06:00-18:00 in one area
and from 18:00-06:00 on the other side of the planet.
Switching to a 24-hour clock eliminates any spurious connection to AM
being "morning" and PM being "evening", thus allowing "morning" to be
defined based on local conditions rather than tying it to the clock.
And yes, DST *is* a good idea in a non-agrarian society, since we
"all" (note the quotes) go to work at the same time. Even though
during the summer the Sun rises earlier in the day, we still "all"
go to work at the same time, so that extra amount of daylight in the
early morning is wasted, since there's nothing we can do with it.
Or, and I realize this is utterly crazy... people could just leave the
clock set to the same time and *still go to work an hour earlier, even
though the clock says something different*. Once again, there's nothing
magical about the numbers on the clock which causes any meaningful
change in the world.