As much as timezones are a pain (I'm a programmer who recently finished working on an international calendar for an app), I don't think getting rid of timezones is a great idea. https://qntm.org/abolish
I think a much better goal would be getting rid of daylight savings. THAT causes so much headache for little reason nowadays
The only argument that convinced me against that, would be that in some places, there are people who would have to change the date in the middle of their day, like, imagine working at an office and in the morning you're signing the date as the 14th and in the evening as the 15th. Having two different dates during the same "human day" kinda makes dates a bit weird, and I get that
Honestly, we should just do it like the original model of zones worked: 1 time zone per zone of latitude, i.e. each time zone aligned with each 15-degree-apart meridian.
None of this "Oh we used to be part of [Input Empire Name Here] so let's keep our time zones the same as them." Damned colonial bullshit...
Edit: Longitude, not latitude. Lol. Was thinking it but wrote the opposite. Haha.
Hey, you don't even need to be a part of [Input Empire Here], you can just be a Hitler megafan and change your time zone to impress Senpai (ahem, Spain)
It's not all like that. Some just change to be able to do more business with their neighbours.
I particularly like China's model where they just say fuck timezones and put the whole country on one single zone. Everyone is just aware that the sun rises at different times in different parts of the country.
It already exists and is called UTC. I worked in an office that provided “follow the Sun” technical support, we had offices in France, Germany, Washington, New York, Australia, and everything ran on UTC time. Much easier to coordinate meetings and shift handovers. Took a while to learn to think in UTC time as well as local time, though.
Have you ever wondered how life might be different if we kept 2 times, a local solar time for the things that do not matter and an official or coordinated time?
I'm disabled, and have little reason to keep coordinated time, so I'm biased. I've thought about trying true solar time as solar noon is not well coordinated with my time zone.
I find the periodicity of noon has a psychological impact on my circadian rhythm that I do not care to bend myself to fit like a slave to a train schedule, but I might appreciate a compromise of bending time to fit my rhythm against the natural Solar cycle.
a local solar time for the things that do not matter and an official or coordinated time?
We basically have this already in the form of UTC+0 (GMT). For most cases where organizations need to coordinate operations across time zones, they just have everyone use GMT.
Less to do with time zones and more aimed at daylight savings since I live near the equator and we don't have it but I want to move to the cold but waking up and going to work dark and finishing work in the dark shits me.
My solution, rather then move the time we speed up the time so we start work at sunrise and end the day with 2 hours of light left.
Sure it will suck when the sun sets at 9pm but it means short work days when it sets early
Where I live, that would mean tomorrow I'd work over 14 hours.
Even if we adjust it so it's 1 hour of sunlight before work* and 3 hours after (for an 8-hour day on average), I'd work 12 hours tomorrow, but only 4 hours in December. No thanks!
*For health, sunlight is most important for waking up, so 1 hour of sunlight before work gives just 1 hour to wake up and get to work. Anything less is sacrificing health for evening sunlight.)
Edit: It would probably be good for SAD in the winter, though, encouraging people to be outside during the daylight hours instead of at work. I could get on board with reduced work hours in winter. ;)