No smearing. Just a single time worldwide. Let society adapt. I mean it's all just semantics. Maybe you wake up at 11pm and go to bed at 3pm. Big deal!
"Hello Uncle Steve!"
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Uncle Steve asks, sounding as if he is still asleep.
"Of course I do, and so do you! It's 04:25 on Saturday... everywhere." I add a dramatic emphasis to the last word.
"But do you know what 04:25 on Saturday signifies in Melbourne?"
"Breakfast time?"
I can actually hear him rubbing his eyes.
"We don't centre our waking/sleeping cycle on solar noon, fool nephew," Uncle Steve explains. "We centre the school day on solar noon. In countries above and below certain latitudes, where seasonal variation in the amount of daylight is significant, it's important for there to be the maximum amount of light when children are going to school in the morning, and coming home from school in the afternoon. Here in Melbourne, solar noon is about 10:30 Standard Time, so the average school day is timetabled from 07:00 to 14:00, and a typical working day runs from about 07:00 to 15:00. That means that on a working day, I get up at 05:00, at the earliest."
"Ooogh. Sorry. That's about two hours later than I reckoned," I tell him.
"I know," he replies.
"I didn't know you did that in Australia," I say. "That deliberate misalignment of the diurnal routine. Does every country do it?"
"No. Equatorial countries don't, because they get plenty of light all year round. Temperate countries do, though. The technical term for it is 'daylight saving'."
I blink.
"And 05:00 is when I get up on a working day," Uncle Steve continues. "On Saturdays, I like to lie in. Until solar noon, if possible. That's more than five hours from now."
I'm beaten. "I guess I have no idea what 04:25 on Saturday signifies. It used to be pretty universal, but now where I live it signifies a time to go out and get drunk..."
"And where I live," Uncle Steve says, "it signifies a hangover."
"The same time of day on the same day of the week means many different things to different people all over the world," I say. "Too many to remember them all."
"Yeah," Uncle Steve grumbles. "It would be neat if there was a lookup table for that kind of thing."
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
• 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.
Particularly the comments by MichaelSzegedy and Tab Atkins.
It changes the meaning of time that we all use to communicate.
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.
Edit: originally said they need to be related which is opposite of my intent
I want to watch the software world burn while I demand that the wall clock on my phone shall start going backwards once I go west faster than ~1000mph.
- What time is it now? - It's 258 degrees and 15 minutes. (5:18pm)