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