That is precisely why time zone lines don't follow longitude lines every 15° precisely, but follow national boundaries or other convenient dividing lines in their general vicinity. Even the International Date Line zigs and zags to keep all of Russia, New Zealand, and various groups of Pacific islands on the same side.

We already do follow UTC where it matters - global systems, operations, etc.

What problem are we even trying to solve? People want noon and midnight to make sense, and every region has customs around what time offices are open and when events happen, etc. Nobody cares what time it is in London - nor wants to overlay London's time onto their own thousands of miles away.

For any application where someone else's time zone is important (setting up a work meeting across multiple continents), the software already shows you everybody's time zones and working hours.

Why are we still using time zones ?

Because the world is still round. Thus, as noted upthread, noon occurs at different times at different longitudes.

And because some of us know where to place punctuation. :p ;)

Yes, and along those lines, I think there is a natural inclination for people everywhere to have, roughly speaking, the point in their day when the sun is at its highest in the sky be called "noon", "12 pm" or something similar to a midpoint in how they measure daily time.

But for any idealized time zone there's an hour solar time difference from one side to the other. For real time zones in North America it's much more than that.

For dealing with international projects, time zones are really no more convenient than having everybody on UTC, it's more that it's just what people got used to because clocks were invented long before ways to communicate at lightspeed across long distances, or easily synchronize those clocks across those distances.

I have a popoout sidebar on all my computers that shows clocks for all the many time zones I deal with. The numbers don't really matter to me as much as the day/night indicators, which could be shown just as easily if everybody were on UTC. And then we should also take latitude into account - people near or past +-66 degrees may be largely indifferent to clock time much of the time. If their sidebar "clock" shows that it's (nearly) always day or always night for them, it would be a good idea to check when they're available UTC.

There's a big difference between grabbing lunch at 1p (because your brain didn't process morning rays as early as some folks further east in your time zone) and forcing yourself to call 3a "lunchtime" because someone's decreed UTC for all.

Let's not forget that the number of people who deal with international projects are a negligible fraction of the world's population. Maybe not on FT - FTers are not typical - but overall. We tend to focus on our own issues, whatever they are. They are magnified out of all proportion in our own minds. Basing worldwide timekeeping on a need to deal with international projects would be a poster child for the tail wagging the dog.

[QUOTE=chrislFor dealing with international projects, time zones are really no more convenient than having everybody on UTC, it's more that it's just what people got used to because clocks were invented long before ways to communicate at lightspeed across long distances, or easily synchronize those clocks across those distances.[/QUOTE]
What percentage of the human races works on international projects where they need to interact live on daily basis with people in other time zones, as opposed to working strictly within their own time zone?

0.0001, 0.00001 maybe?

Maybe we should just switch to bells.

It's all arbitrary no matter which way you slice it, and switching would probably be less hassle than Y2K.

This thread has gotten me wondering if 15th and 16th century colonizers made their new subjects adhere to "proper time", and if the world ever gets to a point where one guy controls every other human, would the rest of us beholden to his schedule?

This thread shows how out of touch with the lived reality of most people some FlyerTalkers are.

Do you want it to be 4am and broad daylight?

The world can't agree on a universal set of measurements much less time keeping.

I once arrived in Anchorage at 10:30pm on July 4th. The sun was still up. Fireworks didn't start until 12:15am and, while the sun had set, the sky was still blueish-gray. It wasn't even Independence Day anymore.

I do not want it to be daylight at 4am.

And that's a special circumstance for Anchorage whereby they get used to it;; but now imagine it's daytime at 4am in Los Angeles... every place you travel to you have to find out what time people normally go to sleep and what time they eat