In the context of the webpage where that is quoted, it means looking up the typical activity for the time in that location. By avoiding the look up of time zones, you haven't really reduced complexity and only shifted it somewhere else because now you're looking up relevant "activity" windows for that location.
You always have 2 components of a key-value dictionary in either system. (1) the "fixed" a familiar knowledge you have as a "key" and then (2) the lookup "value"
- Timezones system: (1) fixed knowledge key is "I know people are awake doing school & business between ~8am to ~5pm and sleep ~9pm to ~6am" for entire globe --> (2) now lookup what timezone they're in : e.g. "California TZ is UTC-07:00"
- no timezones : (1) I know the entire globe is on identical time --> (2) now lookup what numerical values correspond to "awake vs sleep time" in that part of the globe : e.g. "California school/business hours are ~3pm-12am UTC"
Today, if you need to contact a business in Brisbane, you start by looking up their hours, then you convert timezones, then you plan your contact
Without timezones, you no longer need the second step.
Similarly if you are planning a meeting with someone in Brisban you can just say "Does tomorrow between 4 and 8 work for you", with no timezones involved
Honestly seems like an obvious advantage to me
So far, I used to think that people were joking when they advocated abolishing timezones. Now that it seems some are actually serious, then I have a serious question - how do you plan to convince the local population to adopt a completely new time?
For example, I am in SFBA and if there is a vote to shift our time by 8hrs to align with UTC (global timezone), I would vote no. I don't see any benefit in shifting my day by 8hrs and instead of sleeping from 10 to 6, start sleeping from 6 to 2. Oh wait, or would it be 2 to 10? Ah nevermind, too complicated. Let's just continue my current lifestyle because the cost of switch is too high for no obvious benefit to me.
It would feel weird for a while for people no doubt but times already are arbitrary anyways. Why does it matter if you sleep from 1-9 or 13-21?
No it would still be a tremendous hassle. I have a much larger life than my phone, computer and boss. Like, kids - explaining to them the new time change and teaching a whole new schedule ("start bedtime routine at 4:30 instead of 8:30pm") alone would make me vote against this change.
> Why does it matter if you sleep from 1-9 or 13-21?
Because you haven't told me what's the benefit if I do that.
The problem we have today is that we have mass confusion as to when common events like meetings are. In a distributed society like ours, it doesn't matter if I wake up at 04:00 or 17:00 but it does matter when the basketball game is or the meeting is or when the company in Lebanon starts.
The constraints of our society have changed. People in India work the hours in London. People in Florida work the hours of California, and vice versa.
And as we see, we already have countries that span four "natural" time zones and Western China has some ability to adjust.
Eight billion time zones, all available at a glance, with their contact info — Yay!
(I'm not sure myself if this is real or sarcasm, but if it was all UTC, it sure would be one good convenience for caller and callee)
Sunrise/sunset doesn't really give you much of an idea for those, (as you move aware from the equator, at least)
I think it's becoming more and more expected to send a "hey is this a good time for a phone call" before calling.
I think the move away from landlines to mobiles is increasing that expectation further too.
If they don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night you turn on do not disturb on your phone (and most phones let you exempt specific contacts from DnD, or a 2nd call from the same number)
But you're still correct: When most people are using time in conversation, they need it to be meaningful with respect to solar time. If your replacement method can't do that, no one will adopt it.
Probably just about anything you want, as is already commonly available.
Mostly, I expect nations would have official business hours for public employees which would be easily searchable if you needed to call someone on another side of the world, which is not any more difficult than looking up what time zone they live in is now.