[Osiris]

> trying to answer "is this a reasonable time to contact someone?" across great distances

This is a problem right now. My brother lives in Japan but I have no idea if 4pm my time is a reasonable time for him or not without going online and looking it up.

Going to UTC would make scheduling meetings really easy because you'd just say "Meeting at 13:00" and for some people that's the afternoon and others it's the morning and some it's the middle of the night, but there's no timezone math to be done.

I'm doing interviews right now and I have always put "I'm available 10am to 4pm (Mountain)" or I get an interview for "3:30pm EST" (which I then have to think about is 1:30pm my time).

If there were no timezones we wouldn't have to do all that.

[acjacobson]

Wouldn’t you have the same problem of availability though? The issue is not whether the meeting time is the middle of the night - you can do the same thing now by saying the meeting is at 4pm EST and not being concerned about what time it is elsewhere. Making the time UTC everywhere doesn’t resolve that a person in Japan at the same UTC time simply will not attend the meeting because they’re asleep at that time. Switching to UTC everywhere simply changes the question form what time is it there? To are they asleep or awake there? It doesn’t seem like this makes the scheduling aspect easier because regardless of what the clock says you always have to ask the availability question.