One World
It is time for us to embrace that we live on “Spaceship Earth” (read the operating manual here).
There is a huge debate about how to “run” such a “ship” and what problems we need to address right away, but I would love for us to start with some simple things:
- Adopt UTC time everywhere on the planet
- Adopt the metric system (SI) everywhere on the planet
It is just unbelievable to me that I have to spend anytime at all doing time zone and measurement conversions (which I have been doing a lot of lately, so it is top of mind).
Also, I don’t think it is possible for people to work effectively unless they are all communicating using the same mechanisms and metaphors.
The same time and measurement mechanisms would be a great start to getting everyone on the planet “on the same page”.
Of course, that principle begs two other questions. When do we move to a same currency? When do we move to the same language (at least one we all agree that everyone should speak)?
I hesitate to even blog about this topic openly as know that these sorts of issues cause one to call into question one’s identity and values in a deep way, but if you have internalized that we are on a small ship in a vast sea with no land in sight (that could be taking on water), issues like language, currency, time zone, and measurement pale in comparison (at least for me).
One other point worth mentioning, I view measurement, currency, etc. as “encodings” for information. The high order bit for me is efficient information flow. Moving to a standard encoding (think Unicode, etc.) for time, economic value, etc. would be a huge win.
I wonder if there is an “Adopt UTC” or “Adopt SI” groups out there, may be I should start my own group: “Spaceship Earth Foundation”. 
Seems to me you are making mistake with UTC time proposal. Time is relative to geographical location and makes the most sense from peoples point of view that way. It enables constrain their lives by definition of common forms which are universal no matter where you are located. Additionally time might get alternative in numbered form (i.e. having lunch at noon => 12, get up early morning => means from 5 till 8 a.m., etc.) which is neutral to geo-location as well. What would be help to you if you would get lunch time at 9 p.m. UTC time (as Seattle) while I have lunch at 12 because I live in London? You have to know geographic location anyway to say what “logical” day time they have.
Time and culture in that matter is simply different think from other “materialized” stuff like SI units, logistic/working processes, calculating consumptions, etc.
Daylight changes seems to me are useless. Remove them would make live a lot easier. I agree.
And final question. Don’t you think with all those unifications you would loose big source for inventions? Think about Cartesian coordinates here and assume they are only approved standard. No doubt they are good and can handle all solutions but Cylindrical or Spherical coordinates are much easier to use in some cases not to mentioned that they might provide more accurate solution.
I agree with you there is a big space for unification but I highly doubt is good to do it in such large scale. Nothing shall be overdone.
Regards,
Libor
Libor
25 Dec 08 at 23:44
I tend to agree with Libor on this. While standardizing on something the level of metric units makes sense I wouldn’t to standardize, say, human languages.
Diversity exists for real world reasons, and each language has its strengths and weaknesses and allows different levels of expressiveness depending on the culture.
When speaking in Arabic for example I use different vocabulary,style and expressions than English. Some concepts yield themselves to a word or two in a certain language that need multiple sentences in another. I think the world could lose a significant portion of its *ideas* if everyone were forced to think in only one language.
Mohamed Samy
28 Dec 08 at 06:51
@Libor: I don’t see how time is any different than anything else we measure. In fact, we already see that industries which often “span” time zones adopt UTC. I think that we are just going to see that trend increase. It is one thing to know the time zone difference (+ DST) for the US, but for the world (especially when organizing an N party event) it is just too much.
@Mohamed Samy & Libor: Diversity is great, but this is a question of how we communication information between individuals and groups with diverse backgrounds. That is the high order bit for me — how to increase information flow. My claim is that today there are too many inefficiencies in how we communicate _quantifiable_ things based on history that is rooted in a begone era when we thought of the world as some how divisible. That said, we should take advantage of all the mechanisms we have at our disposal to increase information flow — I am well versed in the use of “embedded” languages for more effiecent communication. It don’t think this is an “or” but an “and” (I would love to learn Arabic
).
I do think there is an important point about qualitative things and diversity, particularly artistic expression, to ponder here.
That all being said, if we roll the clock forward 200 years, what how do you think people on the planet communicate information? Actually that is a great question that I am going to pose in a top level post.
metadouglasp
28 Dec 08 at 10:21
[...] Random by metadouglasp on December 28th, 2008 There is a interesting comment thread going on my One World [...]
2208 « Douglas Purdy
28 Dec 08 at 10:48
I do not share your experience with UTC time use directly by users. And that experience is not from local installation but from SaaS type electronic trading application which is used across multiple geographic locations like UK/US/Asia simultaneously (i.e. user base are traders which care about financial data and almost never will know what UTC is). Users do not care what internal time setup application has as long they can see it in their local time zone format or from local time format where they order tickets are working (i.e. say they are in Japan but trade on Chicago’s CME – hence time is in CME local time). The most of the times they trade locally therefore time is same and local.
If you are talking about UTC unification on software or/and data level (data exchange, storage, etc.) I’m absolutely with you. But UTC not to see it by users.
I think adoption common standard while people get used to different one is always very problematic. I can point out on failed GB with adoption SI units. While officially they have to use SI units to harmonize with EU they can still show old British once. This ended up with ridiculous results where British units where merely translated to SI units (e.g. 1 fl.oz to 28.4ml, etc.) but volume sizes remained in “British” volumes. Recently even EU recognized this and let GB keep their own units if they want… There is in fact many “small” adoptions like same voltage and current around globe, same socket layout, etc.
Time is simply not same as millimetres, kilograms, etc. Time is personal related, sun phase (i.e. sunrise, noon &sunset) and location related. This problem is much less visible in other SI measures (i.e. km is same morning and afternoon).
Lets do small experiment here with “minor fixes”. Imagine US will move from 12 hours time to 24 hours time. Is it simple transition for US? I think not and from user perspective and this is even minor change. Or think about date definition like 9/11/2003. Is it meant as September 11 (US style) or November 9 (like in European style)?
Proper question for this article is: “What is individual’s benefit from UTC adoption particularly?” I think is minimal if anything at all. It has to be 10x better so people will accept it (this is even claimed now by M language – 10x better than other tools…).
Overall time period shows what will be result to unify operations and if UTC adoption will win.
Regards,
Libor
Libor
30 Dec 08 at 01:35