[logfromblammo]

Why even bother with a 24-hour clock, then? If we went to a 25-hour day, everyone could get another hour of sleep.

We synchronize clocks to the sun because there is actual merit in matching the civil day to the solar day. The sun-earth relative positioning is the same for everyone on the planet. It sets a time standard without everyone having to agree on it. If someone chooses to go off the common standard, they may be trying to push some time-dependent externality off onto those who remain on it. That's something we should actively punish, rather than everyone joining in to do exactly the same thing.

Making mean solar noon at the nearest meridian divisible by 15 degrees equal to 12:00 clock time would have the benefit of making the clocks uniformly honest. If the laws are the problem, it is the laws that should be changed, not the goddamned clock settings.

[jedberg]

That is basically how the time zones were set. They were modified because it didn't work. We're still working on which modification is best.

With the invention of cheap, ubiquitous, artificial lighting, it makes sense to set the clock at 13h for solar noon. Most people, if having to choose, would rather get up with artificial light and then do outdoor leisure activities with natural light.

[logfromblammo]

Nothing "makes sense" about an arbitrary number. That's why it's arbitrary. It makes an equal amount of sense to say that mean local solar noon is 183615.

The system we have doesn't work because the problem is how to coordinate billions of humans. No solution will ever work, because you can't perfectly coordinate any number of humans greater than about 500. The mess we have now is just built upon centuries of kludges, each trying to improve on how civil time was defined beforehand.

Why are there 24 principal time zones? Because the clock has 24 hours. Why does the clock have 24 hours, with 60 minutes each? Because Sumerians counted on their fingerbones, and Babylonians liked base-60.

Machines, on the other hand, can coordinate perfectly fine on the number of milliseconds since 1Jan1970, at the center of the main telescope of the original Greenwich Observatory. The zone file is the only thing holding the stupid mess together. We could specify civil time to be any rule-based system whatsoever, and the computer clock would still allow us to coordinate with the rest of the world.

With the invention of cheap ubiquitous computing and piezocrystal-mediated clocks, it makes sense to throw out every unit other than the SI second, and stop trying to coordinate things that don't need to be coordinated. Schoolkids don't need to be in their homeroom seats at the same time the NYSE opens. The fast food chain stores don't all need to stop serving breakfast at exactly the same time. And companies don't need to have the same business hours as the local bank branch.

Most owls, as opposed to most larks, would rather get up after sunrise, rather than before it. Tired (literally) of larks setting the schedule for everyone just because they wake up first.