See books written by Paul Pakusch at https://www.amazon.com/author/paulpakusch



Monday, March 29, 2021

Time to Change Time?

I've noticed a lot of people complaining about the change back to Daylight Savings Time a couple weeks ago. Everybody is tired. Everybody says it's an idea that doesn't need to be around anymore. Maybe they are right. Maybe the whole concept of time zones as we know them needs to go away. In aviation, everyone around the world uses the same clock so that flights can easily cross time zones on the same schedule. They call it Zulu time, or Greenwich Mean Time. If everybody in the world did the same, then everyone would share the same clock.

Yes it would be confusing at first but we would all get used to it. Right now, people need to adjust themselves to what the person in another time zone is experiencing. For example when it's 9 a.m. in the Eastern Time Zone, it's 6 a.m. in the Pacific time zone. We know that it's still a few hours away before business opens in the Pacific time zone. Everyone gets that and it's not too hard to understand. But still, you have to think about it when you talk to a relative or business acquaintance in Europe, Japan, Australia or some other place in the world. You have to a conversion or look it up. But if you were all on the same clock, then it would be simple and nobody would need to convert.

Right now, in the Eastern Time Zone, we know that London is 5 hours ahead of us during Standard Time or 4 hours ahead of us during daylight savings time. What if you left it at the same 5 hours throughout the entire year and all on the same clock? If it was 1700 hours in New York for example then you would know that it's 5 hours ahead in London so the time would be 2200 hours.


For example, a New Yorker could ell their relative in Paris, "I will call you at 1400 hours." You both know when to expect 1400 hours because you would be on the same time. 

This is a different way to look at time and clocks, but maybe it's time to think about it.  Pun intended.


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