Taps name of Uncle Steve: Siri pops up: "Are you sure? Most people are asleep in the location of Uncle Steve, the sun will be up in 2 hours."

When I plan meetings with colleagues around the globe, Outlook corrects my time but it also (in light gray) indicates the typical workday in the meeting planner. Very handy.

Let's invert the argument:

Before abolishing unified time

I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What are the working hours there? Google tells me it is currently 7:00 to 15:00 there. It's probably best not to call right now.

After abolishing unified time

I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. When are the working hours there? it's 8:00 to 16:00, same as it is here, of course! Same as it is in New York, Bangalore and Hawaii, at the South Pole and on the Moon.

You get the point...

The difference is that as soon as you know what time it is in Melbourne, you know if you can call Uncle Steve. Regardless, you have to know where the sun is, because that determines whether or not Uncle Steve is awake (most likely). But it’s much easier to find his timezone offset and figure that out than figure out if the sun is up there (which incidentally, timezones actually allow you to do).

It’s much easier if noon is noon around most of the world (obviously it gets more meaningless the further north and south you get), as opposed to always having the same time and having to figure out where the sun is.

This is why one world timezone is a terrible idea. It makes some calculations simpler, but it otherwise royally fucks with how humans work, and humans are much more concerned with where the sun is.

All of that assumes that we would still be using old-fashioned phone calls.

Why, when analyzing some proposed future "improvement", do we assume that everything else will/must remain unchanged?

The general case with civilization and technology is that progress happens when multiple factors improve independently but happen to complement each other in tandem.

Society is already moving away from blind phone calls. People no longer seem to appreciate calls that aren't announced via text beforehand.

In the "future", everyone would/should have rich presence and status messages to see when one is asleep, busy, or available, and interact with them accordingly.

Live posting private information, like whether you're currently in a vulnerable state like sleep, would be a huge safety concern for many people. Making this data non-public would completely defeat the purpose.

Plus, how on earth is constantly updating your status more convenient than changing the clock twice a year? Who is actually going to bother to do that? What problem does this solve exactly?

• It doesn't need to say "sleeping", just "away", "busy" or "offline" like on most messaging services now and since forever.

• Sleep/availability detection is already automatic and can be improved.

• Extra details don't need to be public, only shared with [specific] friends. Unexpected calls from unknown contacts wouldn't be welcome anyway.

Interestingly I found the comments of that linked page convinced me for the 'single timezone' argument.

Particularly the comments by MichaelSzegedy and Tab Atkins.

So instead of the time there you’d look up the sun position. Not worse just different.

It is worse.

It changes the meaning of time that we all use to communicate.

Why is solar position so important compared to ability to coordinate simultaneous events across wide geographies? It would be much simpler to have a globally consistent definition of time/simultaneity and treat other things (like solar position, working hours, etc) as scheduling constraints.

We put up with crazy things in an attempt to match solar position. The meaning of time we all use is flawed when I can hop on a plane and go back to yesterday. That's quite inconsistent with the accepted definition of time as unidirectional.

I agree, though it would make New Years Eve less fun away from the prime meridian. Probably worth it.

I talk about morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night. Those are solar concepts and need not be related to the clock.

Edit: originally said they need to be related which is opposite of my intent

They have to be related because that’s what humans are concerned with. Timekeeping is meaningless if noon for you means the sun is up and noon for me means it’s the dead of night. What purpose does that serve? Timekeeping is all about where the sun is, because humans still have sleep/wake cycles, and most people obviously want to do things when the sun is up.

Noon to me means the sun is directly overhead. When I travel the clock time of noon changes. Noon is traditionally 12:00, but it need not be. I care about local noon because adjusting my life around the local sun is a useful thing - it is very difficult to not be awake when the sun is up and sleep at night. Even if you travel a long distance you body will want to adjust to local sun patterns over the course of a month.

That’s the definition of different.