Transition from timezones to 100% locational time.

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Nimblewright_47@reddit

OP - possible, but why? Assigning values to time is a societal construct for convenience. Near-locational time was the norm before the railways (and subsequent systems that meant you might need to know the time accurately more than a few miles away): it isn't now because we want to send messages and trains and planes long distance and being able to make schedules work is useful.

Your idea mostly requires everyone to carry around a precise locater at all times or be unable to figure out what any printed schedule means relative to them.

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mgarr_aha@reddit

The location need not be very precise. If a 30-second time error is acceptable, then the location tolerance is on the order of ±10 km at mid latitudes.

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Nimblewright_47@reddit

In that case, what's the advantage?

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mgarr_aha@reddit

No more 60-minute discontinuities at zone boundaries or arguing about which zone should be where.

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calimehtar@reddit

Just as crazy: no more time zones, time is now exclusively measured in seconds since January 1, 1970.

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flunky_the_majestic@reddit

That would be epoch

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The_Troyminator@reddit

That’s too many seconds. Change it to seconds since 7 minutes ago.

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soundman32@reddit

Have you never heard of leap years, or leap seconds? Also, negative leap seconds are a thing. Seconds since 1970 stopped being used by sensible devs last century.

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calimehtar@reddit

Unix epoch explicit ignores leap years and seconds so we're good.

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Groundbreaking_Bag8@reddit

January 1, 1970 in what time zone?

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alex9001@reddit

GMT

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just_another_user5@reddit

the average of all the timezones

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flamingspew@reddit

But in sidereal time

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ijuinkun@reddit

This guy UNIXes.

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spoonybard326@reddit

The train schedules would be so confusing no one would be able to tell how late Amtrak is.

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mgarr_aha@reddit

Not really. The timetable would list the local time at each station, which a smartphone app could compute on the fly.

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spunkyenigma@reddit

You do know train schedules are what created time zones in the first place

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mgarr_aha@reddit

Yes. Too bad they didn't have GPS in 1883.

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roxgib_@reddit

This was actually a big reason timezones were brought in. Trains used to crash because each rail company had their own clock and they were all different.

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Icy_Huckleberry_8049@reddit

then noting would even make sense - meet at the restaurant for dinner - you're either late or early, same for EVERYTHING else - jobs (work), airline trips, meetings, etc.

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thoughtihadanacct@reddit

You just need to know the exact position of the restaurant, and calculate what time it is at the restaurant, convert it to what time it is at your location, then decide when to leave. It's doable, albeit complicated. Point is, you can be on time. It just takes more effort.

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Icy_Huckleberry_8049@reddit

No one want to spend MORE EFFORT on figuring out what time to be somewhere

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WishboneFirm1578@reddit

this is what they used to do before trains existed

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ParentPostLacksWang@reddit

From a software development perspective, let me just say, this may be the solution so Fermi’s paradox. Eventually all societies try to switch to 100% locational time, and it causes the complete and immediate breakdown of all software, due to the sudden anguished self-termination of all software developers, leading to their society’s collapse.

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Nate_Christ@reddit

Or hear me out, you only use local software. Anchorage reddit, population: 11k, number of subs: 2, ice and cats

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ParentPostLacksWang@reddit

Ooof, tempt me with a good time why don’t you! Sounds like the good old BBS and IRC days, anonymous but local, or just tight little communities, run on the smell of an oily rag from Joe’s basement, before giant fucking behemoths decided it was profitable to chuck us all in the wood chipper, blend and homogenise us then let us fractionally distil ourselves into little subs to try and reclaim the sense of community we lost when they bought our eyeballs and rented them back to us…

Uhh… well that rant went on a fun yet tangential gallop didn’t it!

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Nate_Christ@reddit

I wish I was there. Being born around the turn of the millennium the coolest things I had access to were old dieing bbs style forums. Rant away, this is r/crazyideas after all

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Sweet_Speech_9054@reddit

The distance changes based on latitude. You need to base it on longitude, not distance.

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Odd-Respond-4267@reddit

Interesting, So what time is it at the north pole?

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Nimblewright_47@reddit

"Whatever time you've decided to be in". The pole itself experiences about one day to night cycle per year so your observation of time is pretty much dependent on your preference.

I don't know whether people who live near the North Pole conceptualise time differently. The most northerly inhabited point is Alert CFB, at 82°30'N, who observe EST (UTC-5/-4) presumably to tie into Ontario and Québec.

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Lazarus558@reddit

Its longitude runs through eastern Quebec (EST) and Labrador and the western Maritimes (AST), so there's that.

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Puzzleheaded-Tip660@reddit

I like it, I could deal with this.

For things like going to my dentist, (I walk there from home,) I’d just plan it the same way I do now: the fact that I’m now 10 seconds early would not be enough to notice. For going to my girlfriend’s house, I’d be 3 minutes late, not quite enough to be a real problem but I really should leave a little earlier. I’d learn and adjust, just like if there was construction or something. Work I’d be a minute early, (traveling north south doesn’t change the time.) All of those are within the margin of error of when I’d show up anyways.

For longer distance travel it isn’t like I have a perfect mental idea as to how long the trip should take, so the fact that time zones changed in the process wouldn’t be that important. And when flying in a plane the time zone often changes anyways, so no problem there.

Where it matters is calling long distance, but unless you are trying to call exactly at 5pm or something, you could guess and get pretty close. And while my world clock app on my phone would have to be rewritten, I could check it and go “ohh, Boston is really quite a bit east of Miami.”

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NiceTryAmanda@reddit

would it be possible to knock out metric time too

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unmelted_ice@reddit

Absolutely! We could just expand the distance of the locational time zones to something around 17,800 football fields in distance and then metric is no more