What is WUT? Worldwide Universal Time of course!
With the recent time zone change (and the confusion that always accompanies daylight savings time) it got me to think about time zones, daylight savings and coordinated universal time.
At times I am still amazed at how few people understand UTC or Coordinated Universal Time, even those people who live in that exact time zone! Throw daylight savings time in there and I’m pretty sure heads explode. Back in the days when getting a message across the planet took weeks this may have made some sense. When the industrial revolution came around there really was no time standard, so when a train would leave one city and go to the next it was entirely possible that you would arrive before you left… Well according to the city time at least. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted in 1847 by the Railway Clearing House to help eliminate this issue. If all of the train stations used the same general time, then you could no longer arrive before you left. This was a great invention 150 years ago, but times have changed and the world is a lot smaller now.
In 1972 GMT was abolished. Ok, not really abolished per say, but it was replaced in most regions by UTC or Coordinated Universal Time and should have been abolished. When someone says ‘GMT’ today they are actually referring to UTC and just don’t know it. Same with Z or Zulu time. Coordinated Universal Time is the most accurate clock the planet has which is based on atomic time. In fact you probably use it every day and don’t even know it! GPS uses UTC to keep the satellites in sync, so if you’re ever on a boat cruise, flying on an airplane, launching a missile at an enemy country, or driving your car with GPS nav you’re using UTC. In 1972 it was enough just to make the clocks of the world scary accurate, but there was no need to touch daylight savings time or time zones in general, so they didn’t. UTC follows the same offset as GMT did.
As we approach 2010 I think it is time to take UTC to the next level and create WUT or Worldwide Universal Time. In my proposal we would continue to use the scary accurate atomic clocks that UTC is based off of, but the entire concept of daylight savings time would be gone. You would never, ever, ever change your clocks forward or backward an hour again. In addition (and just to make me sound super loony) the concept of time zones should be removed as well. We live in a world where real-time communications can happen at any hour of any day on any place on the planet or even in space! Why then do we cling to the idea that 12:00 noon must be when the sun is directly overhead? Who cares where the sun is at any moment in time anymore! That’s why lights were invented. Move to a 24 hour time and make it a universal time across the planet, right at the current offset of 0. In my proposed scenario the sun would be directly over my head at what I call noon today at 1800 hours WUT. What difference does it really make? The entire planet can work on whatever time is correct for that region and we would all have our watches set to the exact same time, accurate to the sub-sub-sub second. When you schedule that conference call between Japan and New York everyone would know exactly how the meeting time would affect them.
Yeah, radical idea that will probably never happen. As we reach more and more to the stars and as the world becomes smaller and smaller clinging on to this legacy time system will become harder and harder. Lets just make everyones life easier, come together as a planet and accept WUT as the new universal time that everyone will use.
kthxbai
Good post. I’m all for the switch to WUT.
One of the reasons I love living in Arizona is that we don’t observe DST! None of this “gaining” or “losing” an hour during the year.
In Arizona, DST just doesn’t make sense, anyway. Why, when it’s 115 degrees outside, would you WANT an “extra” hour of daylight? During the summer, most peeps only come out of air-condiditioned buildings or cars when it cools down a bit at night.
I agree, in an age where information can be transmitted anywhere in the world almost instantly and we’re becoming more connected all the time, WUT just makes sense.
Ben, you’re wrong about a lot of stuff, but not this!
In the spirit of “think globally, act locally” I propose that you adopt the practice yourself. Set your watch to UTC/WUT. Stop doing the time zone conversions for people at the end of each SVC live show, just tell them to “tune in next Friday at 02:00 UTC.” When you schedule appointments with people, give them the time in UTC and let them do the math if they want to. But, if you do this, then you HAVE to make sure you include the “UTC” tag, else you start to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution…
OK, so maybe as a first step, just make the switch to a 24-hour clock to ease people around you into things. This is an easier step because many watches/phones/PCs etc will let you switch to 24-hour mode pretty easily. (But not many car stereos, much to my dismay.) Also, though it shocks them a bit at first, most people can pretty quickly figure out what you mean when you tell them to meet you at 17:00.
(Maybe as a first step, can you set the timestamps of the comments to this blog to display in 24-hour UTC? Or is that a client-side setting that I should look for?)
Anyway, I’ve got your back on this one.