Is It Time We Get Rid Of Timezones

[Applause]

time is arguably our most

valuable resource with challenges facing

us today such as irreversible damaging

climate change

now more than ever we need to make the

best use of our time

but what if i told you that every single

day we wake up and we reinforce a system

that has been scientifically proven to

stop us from doing so

by biologically limiting us a system

which has been weaponized politically

time and time again

i’m talking about time zones in the last

few decades time zones have gone from

being a

standardized measurement of distance

from gmt to a vastly complicated but

fascinating display of political and

economic alliances

the most recent example of this comes in

2011

when kiribati leaped to the other side

of the international date line

and change their time zone by a whopping

23

hours in order to match at oceanic

neighbors australia and new zealand

for business and political

communications but this begs the

question

do we need new time zones or better yet

what if we got rid of them entirely what

if we were to implement a system of

worldwide universal time

or utc to properly understand

our need for a universal time zone we

first need to take a brief look at the

history of standardized time

every country in the world uses a time

zone based on an hourly offset from gmt

a time zone based on the prime meridian

that runs through greenwich

gmt was first adopted in 1880 due to the

emergence of railways and the various

scheduling issues

that a lack of standardised time brought

about passengers would find themselves

missing trains because

clocks in different towns and cities

would run a few minutes apart

by 1929 most countries had adopted a

time zone based on an offset from gmt

but it took until 1986 for every country

in the world to do so

with nepal adopting a bizarre 15-minute

offset

making their clocks around 5 hours and

45 minutes off from gmt

this odd deviation brings me to my next

point there’s a lot wrong with our

current time zones

most of them don’t even accurately

measure time geographically whatsoever

russia currently has 11 time zones with

china for the sake of unity

has just won despite being only 1.8

times larger than china

russia has 11 times the number of time

zones

clearly this isn’t an accurate system

nowadays the only purpose time zones

serve are making political points

our entire daily schedules are toyed

with and changed by governments

with no actual benefit other than making

petty points

china recently arrested a yugo muslim

for having his watch set to a rimchi

time

a local time zone used in the west of

the country where the sun

rises and sets at a much different time

to beijing

other countries have modified their time

zones to show political independence

north korea recently celebrated the 70th

anniversary of the liberation of korea

from japan

by setting their clocks back half an

hour separating themselves from japan

and south korea

and creating what they called pyongyang

time

now besides from being used as political

weaponry one of the other

key problems with our time zones is that

they wreak havoc

on our bodies our bodies are regulated

by dozens of internal circadian rhythms

that

dictate everything from when we feel

hungry to when we feel awake and alert

these are in turn managed by our

internal body clock which is regulated

by external factors such as light or

dark or

sunrise and sunset our time zones wreak

havoc on this by forcing us to get up

and work at times that don’t match our

internal body clock

people in spain operate on central

european time despite being

quite far to the west this puts their

body clocks out of sync with their

sunrises

which has been proven to lead to severe

sleep deprivation

so i want to ask you why do we have to

put up with this

what can we do instead today i want to

talk to you about a radical new idea

that could potentially solve all these

problems

utc utc stands for coordinated

universal time now you may be thinking

none of those letters are in the right

place and you’d be correct

the acronym is actually a compromise

between french and english speakers

a mix between coordinated universal time

and thomps universe el cordon

semantics aside utc is simply put

a worldwide universal time zone

every clock from the phone in my pocket

to your grandfather’s watch

all displaying the same time if it’s 6

p.m in london

it’s 6 p.m in new york utc is actually

already used worldwide by

pilots who refer to it as zulu which

admittedly does sound a lot cooler

they use it due to the potential

confusion with organizing international

flights across time zones

but the idea of adopting utc worldwide

was first popularized by two physicists

steve hank and richard henry they argued

that with the rise of the internet

our time zones are irrelevant with the

internet

obliterating time and space completely

due to the ability to communicate

instantly across the world with anyone

they argue that our time zones were

created far before this when everything

was local

which makes them redundant now they also

argue that time zones are purely used

for political leverage nowadays

as i mentioned earlier the main question

surrounding implementing utc

is simply why well let me tell you

implementing utc and getting rid of our

current standardized time zones will

provide us with

huge mental and physical health benefits

by aligning our sleep schedules with our

natural circadian rhythms

as our waking hours will finally reflect

the sunrise and sunset pattern

it’ll come back to benefit us in more

ways than just our health as well

a recent study found in that just one

year the us lost over 433 million

dollars

in lost work due to unproductivity

caused by time zone related sleep

disruption

overall it would make international

communication so much easier

if i was to call my family in the us

right now i’d need to work out which of

the three u.s time zones are in

calculate the difference between there

and here and then figure out whether

they’d be awake in that time

with utc all i need to do is work out

whether they’d be awake at the time

and give them a ring it’s simple it’s

efficient

and it’s the best fit for an

international society such as the one we

live in today

obviously there are some difficulties we

may face in implementing utc

it will require a radical shift in the

way we think about time

when i first discussed this idea with

friends and family i was often met with

confusion

well if it’s 3am wouldn’t it be dark

outside

standardized times become so

intrinsically linked with the way we see

our day

3am means it’s dark out 7pm is when you

eat dinner etc etc

the change would also need to be adopted

worldwide all at once

utc will not work if a handful of

countries are refusing to adopt it

so what do you think is it about time we

change the way we think about time

utc could be our ticket to becoming

wealthier healthier and more well rested

all we need to do is implement it but

i’ll give you time to think about that

for yourselves thank you for coming to

my talk