https://qntm.org/abolish

Consider: in a world with timezones, all you need to know is what time’s in Melbourne right now, and what time Steve’s typically awake these days. In a world without timezones, all you need to know is what time Steve’s typically awake these days.

What about 0000 hitting in the middle of the day? Well, a bar I recently went to is open “Thu–Sat 8pm to 4am, Sun 8pm to 2am, Mon–Wed off”. In a world without timezones I don’t think anyone would be confused by a sign like “Sun–Fri 2300 to 0500” at a post office or barber shop.

We have tools to deal with timezones, so that complexity is pretty much hidden these days. That said, I can’t help but notice every now and then how leaky the abstraction is. Humans are not machines—more and more people work independently or on flexible office hours, many businesses are routinely open different times depending on the season even if the country uses DST, and so on.

-I was once told (and found it too amusing to verify the truth of it!) that as GMT took hold as the go-to global time reference, the French grudgingly complied, but referred to it as 'Paris time minus seven minutes and twenty-six seconds' or something to that effect.

Perhaps the writing is silly, but there's nothing silly about the point the point that of course people will maintain the solar day for daily life, and abolishing timezones will basically break time for most people (especially those whose "midnight" (and so the changing of the date and name of day) will land during the solar day).

The applicability of timestamp conventions for setting business meetings is largely dependent on how easily one can look up the same moment across multiple IANA timezones [1]. For example, looking up how typical local working hours cascade between different timezones [2]. If multi-converters like this became mainstream, Swatch Internet Time may very well have been a hit. But it wasn't, and such a tool, even for UTC, remains hard to find.

[1] https://www.iana.org/time-zones [2] https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meetingtime.html?iso=...

> for business meetings, etc. something like Swatch Internet Time would be great

Let's discuss this on 2018-06-07 at 04:30, UTC.

I thought Google would be the easiest source for a conversion, but for me a search for "04:30 UTC" gives a banner at the top, "17.30 Tuesday, in Denmark": https://www.google.dk/search?q=04%3A30+UTC

So maybe one problem it solves, is the American assumption that everyone uses the 12-hour clock.

I'm an American, and I was not aware of the "American assumption that everyone uses the 12-hour clock." Please elaborate further.

My computer is configured correctly, but it's rather common for an application (especially a phone app) or website to ignore those settings, or to think it knows better.

04:30 UTC means 04:30 UTC, or 05:30 in Denmark. Not 17:30!

The same can happen if I type something like "04:30 Catch flight" into an appointment in my Google Calendar. It is converted into a new appointment "16:30 Catch flight".

It's not just Google. "Your Office 365 subscription will automatically renew on 1/19/2018." and the admin interface is a mix of date and time formats.

Uh, yeah, I'm well aware of that, as are most Americans I know. That's why I asked about "the American assumption that everyone uses the 12-hour clock". That must be a myth that non-Americans believe in.

It's definitely in keeping with how we mix meters/feet and pints/litres.

C'mon, stop. So edgy.

It isn't quite so extreme as that edgy metric system trendiness all the kool kids seem to be in to these days, but, uh, there is a world out there.