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As much as I respect Kate Wagner and her work on McMansion Hell, this thread is a bit naff, I think. Let me explain.
We depend on standard and synchronised time much more than just for capitalist and industrialist purposes.
The Internet itself would not function the way it does if we did not have some sort of standard, synchronised time, like UNIX time.
There's also a lot to say about industrialisation not necessarily being exclusively a capitalist endeavour. Look at Stalin's 5-year-plans.
So to just shit on standard/synchronised time and imply that we should get rid of it is, frankly, kind of ridiculous.
That being said, I think there's plenty of problems with both our attitudes towards timekeeping, and the international timezone system.
Most countries should move to Daylight Savings Time, and then just stay there. Standard time skews heavily behind solar time for most.
here's a map showing the difference between Standard and Solar time. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm…
that map also gives us insight into another problem: There are not enough timezones.
P.S. WTF CHINA
So here's how it is: people respond to solar time better, more readily, and more intuitively than they do standard time.
People in Huntsville AL tend to go to sleep earlier (according to standard time) than people in Amarillo TX Even though they share timezones
and there's also a correlation between going to sleep "earlier", and making more money, apparently.
the way that relationship is supposed to work is this: socially we're all conditioned to wake up at a certain time. Say, 6am.
This btw assumes a "regular" job and daily activity schedule. Some people work best 9-5, some 12-8, I'm more 2-10. Let's ignore that.
If you sleep earlier but wake up at a set time, you get more sleep, are cognitively healthier, can work better, & ergo can make more money.
Source: "Time Use and Productivity", M. Gibson & J. Schrader, via "Economics of Sleep, Part 2", Freakonomics. freakonomics.com/podcast/the-ec…
So: we have an admittedly unhealthy social relationship with standard time, and a timezone system that casts the net a little too wide.
since it's extremely hard to change global attitudes towards time, I think the easiest solution is to change the timezone system.
Suggestion: Instead of fewer timezones separated by whole hours, have more timezones separated by 15 minutes.
Each region or sub-region would adopt a timezone that corresponds closest to solar time in the majority of its land area.
Admittedly this means China gets to shaft Tibet and Xinjiang again, but they'll never listen to an insignificant foreigner like me anyways
but anyway, there. With how cheap microcomputers are these days I think we could easily implement this nicely without too much confusion.
