Will we ever have one time zone for all?

I feel like in the last 15 or so years time zones became too much of a burden. Every time you decide on doing something together with your friends from other countries it gets very confusing, you recheck the time zones, summer time rules and other crap ten times, and still sometimes get it wrong. Is it possible that the world will switch to one universal time zone in the future? In China they actually did this and it sounds pretty neat imo.

How should that work? Time zones exist because it's night in one part of the world while it's daylight elsewhere.

Do you really expect people on the other side of the earth be awake at night when it's convenient for you?
And who decides which time zone to take? Because it's obvious that everybody would choose their own one because it's more convenient.

Yeah, time zones made sense in the past, but now that billions (?) of people all over the world interact with each other every day, maybe it's time to get rid of them... So like just have one time zone and for some people day will begin at 6:00 while for others it will begin at 16:00 or whatever. I'm not saying that people should be awake at night.

How would that help? It'd not make anyone more available and make a time measurement a total chaos.

It would help because everyone would understand what "First Demo Contest begins at 18:00 Doom Time" means immediately, with zero chance of confusion.

Time zones suck. Unfortunately, I live in such a shithole, that the time difference between me and the civilized world (Europe, US...) is really big... For example, I'm most active on forums when the majority of you is absent, while when I'm in bed, you guys have some serious fun there! Unfair! Time sucks!

Life sucks!

Once I had sent someone a text message, and they had responded almost instantaneously with a lengthy paragraph addressing my question. It was only a matter of a couple seconds; probably one of the weirdest things I've seen.

Time would lose usability if timezones got unified. The purpose of it is to help distinguishing day/night cycle, so you would be basically just creating chaos. If you travel from place to place, you wouldn't know when a night starts unless you see it getting darker outside yourself.

j4rio said:

Time would lose usability if timezones get unified. The purpose of it is to help distinguishing day/night cycle, so you would be basically just creating chaos. If you travel from place to place, you wouldn't know when a night starts unless you see it getting darker outside yourself.

Though, when I was in the Netherlands, the sun came down at 11 pm, and rose at 4 am. It was pretty cool.

kuchitsu said:

It would help because everyone would understand what "First Demo Contest begins at 18:00 Doom Time" means immediately, with zero chance of confusion.

If you need unified time you have to resort to UTC. That it's different from most parts of the world's actual time is irrelevant. But since life does not revolve around the internet, despite some technocrats trying to tell you so, time needs some relation to the actual day/night cycle of a place.

Whether that hampers your online activities doesn't interest the majority of people.

What is GMT? What is UTC? What is having a world clock app on your phone and just referencing whatever timezone you want immediately?

Meh, a lot of people nowadays go to sleep way after 00:00 so I'm not sure if the day/night cycle is still very relevant. Especially since it also kinda depends on summer\winter.

kuchitsu said:

Meh, a lot of people nowadays go to sleep way after 00:00 so I'm not sure if the day/night cycle is still very relevant. Especially since it also kinda depends on summer\winter.

Yes, and just because "a lot" of people do means we should stop accounting for those who don't? I guarantee there are equally as many people who go to sleep before that time. Moreover it's irrelevant - time zones exist to represent local time based on how the sun rises and sets in that particular region - it helps determine sleep cycles and daily eating routines.


And as Coopersville said there already exists UTC. Is it so hard to get your friends organized around a UTC time?

This has to be a fucking joke. haha

you guys are just conforming to society

A universal time zone has existed for decades. The fact that nobody uses it should pretty much answer your question.

kuchitsu said:

you guys are just conforming to society

Well, that's like, just your opinion, man.

Sorry we will not. Timing difference between one half and other too colossal in order of Light and Dark theory.

kuchitsu said:

you guys are just conforming to nature

FTFY

I seriously wonder if you are just trolling at this point

kuchitsu said:

you guys are just conforming to society

I'm quite sure we just enjoy roasting your deliberately dumb ideas.

AndrewB said:

A universal time zone has existed for decades. The fact that nobody uses it should pretty much answer your question.

A website I visit almost daily displays forecasts for tv/radio signal propagation in UTC.

Theres no way im going to school at 10PM just so some Chinese guy can have breakfast at a convenient time.

We will have one time zone for all after WW3, when all continents have been destroyed and life remains possible only on the one single Pacific Island that hasn't been swallowed by the rising sea level caused by global warming.

kuchitsu said:

Every time you decide on doing something together with your friends from other countries it gets very confusing,

You're in a very tiny minority of people doing things with people in other countries, which is pretty much "people playing video games, and people working in multinational companies". The alternative (everyone uses UTC) would probably be more confusing to most people.

This should be required reading for anybody wishing to abolish time zones.

So he can google what time is it in Melbourne but he can't google when it is night in Melbourne, okay.

But I guess fraggle is right and I'm just judging the whole world unfairly based on my own experiences.

AlexMax said:

This should be required reading for anybody wishing to abolish time zones.

I don't think that article leaves any question open and should end this pointless discussion.

kuchitsu said:

So he can google what time is it in Melbourne but he can't google when it is night in Melbourne, okay.

Usually when you read something, you read all of it, not the first couple of paragraphs. It explains quite extensively why finding out when the morning is merely the tip of the iceberg.

We haven't even stopped the daylight savings crap, how do you expect everyone to change to UTC just like that? I agree that there are ways in which it would be convenient for international activities, certainly not limited to international gaming, but everyone and their dog has internet access - timezone conversion apps/exes are only a few clicks away.

Some people are acting like this is totally insane - it's not, but looking at the big picture, it would definitely cause far more problems/disturbances/etc than it's worth. Some digital clocks/applications actually have a second display for this reason which is rather useful.

Edit: AlexMax's link addresses it all perfectly.

Edit 2: This is off topic, but.. Why did you stop going as Memfis?

Doomkid said:

Edit 2: This is off topic, but.. Why did you stop going as Memfis?

Probably did as was suggested in this Blogs thread