Yanks who read this blog are reminded that tomorrow is the day we turn our clocks forward to mark the return to Daylight Savings Time. The implication for me is that DC will once again find itself only 13 hours behind Seoul instead of 14.
I think it's time we got rid of this nonsense. The history of DST throughout the world was and is linked to technological issues: it affects the energy use of farmers, retailers, and homeowners.
You might be interested to know that Korea doesn't change its clocks twice a year. I lived with that fact for eight years and found it perfectly fine. So what if the mornings are darker or brighter according to the season? For most of us, office-bound as we are, this means little. And farmers can certainly adjust their own schedules to adapt to the changing lighting (they probably do this already!). What's the point of making such a twice-yearly change these days? I find it archaic.
I've often mused about going further and switching us to one single "Global Standard Time." This would put everyone on the planet on exactly the same page, though it would render an expression like "working 9 to 5" irrelevant for most of the world. It would also appear counterintuitive that some people would look at their clocks and read "12AM" at midday, and "12PM" at midnight.
But travelers would never again have to worry about "local time." Historians would have a more objective metric by which to chronicle events. "The incident occurred at 10:20PM" would mean the same thing to everyone, no matter their location on the globe. Of course, historians would be further tasked with mentioning the time of day: "The incident occurred at 10:20PM, a bright summer's morning in Chesterville."
What are your thoughts on upending the status quo?
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Marathon
11 years ago
9 comments:
Yeah, I say we get rid of DST, but GST will never fly. Too much politics involved.
Alas, I agree: moving to GST is asking too much.
Kevin
I think we should get rid of time altogether. It just keeps chugging along, making me older. It reminds me that I'm often late. If we abolished time and agreed to meet at "whenevero'clock" I'd always be prompt, pretty much.
This cracks me up. Jelly, you are the AA Milne of the Koreablogosphere. And I mean that as a high compliment.
Kevin
"time, time, said old king tut
is something i ain't got anything but"
- archy the cockroach (Don Marquis)
I'm perfectly happy to dump DST - I'd rather deal with the gradual lengthening or shortening of the day without the sudden dislocations created by "springing forward" or "falling back."
As for "GST," I don't see the point, unless we all migrate to outer space. The current system, in which "noon" is when the Sun is (more or less) directly overhead, works for pretty much everyone. Check out China if you want to see what happens when a large area (east-to-west) tries to run using a single time zone. It's stupid and unpleasant.
Kinda like me.
Elisson,
Yeah, that's what I meant by the "counterintuitive" problem. The very concept of AM and PM is tied to that invisible meridian in the sky.
For GST, we might need to switch to non-numerical designations for the hours, kinda like how the Western solar calendar names its months instead of numbering them. Of course, that would bring up standardization issues, which would bring us back to politics...
Kevin
Kevin,
I guess you haven't heard, but there is talk about South Korea going to DST again.
I believe that the start of all this nonsense is all thanks to golf.
John from Daejeon
We have that already. Your GST is everybody else's GMT, used by e.g. pilots throughout the world (and the ISS?).
Eunoia,
Good point; GMT is a widely used reference. But it's not truly global: only specialized communities make use of it. I'm aiming for something bigger-- standard time the way Gene Roddenberry might have envisioned it.
Stardates!
The problem with interstellar stardates, though, is that, as Einstein showed, there is no absolute simultaneity. If it's 2PM on this side of the galaxy, it's not 2PM on some planet on the opposite side. The warp and weft of star-stretched space-time makes absolute simultaneity impossible.
Kevin
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