[jefftk]

Maybe an archipelago of large independent cities, all too proud to switch to the local time of another? It's annoying for scheduling things that go between islands, but this is just a really small portion of what anyone is doing?

[bena]

Now you're trying to define the society based on the result you want. The fact that you have to put up so many roadblocks to get the result you're looking for should tell you that synchronized time is inevitable.

Because now you have to have an archipelago of independent cities that don't even want to talk to other cities or expand or anything.

[jefftk]

> Now you're trying to define the society based on the result you want.

Yes? The whole idea was to think about what sort of world you would need for local solar time to you have persisted.

[bena]

You posited a world without rail. That was your initial proposition. That without rail, we wouldn't have needed to synchronize time.

But then we quickly realize that it wasn't rail per se that caused us to develop synchronized time, it was connectivity. So that's the thing you have to cut out. And that's a much bigger ask, because rail isn't the only way to connect things.

At some point you've redefined so much that the exercise is just kind of pointless navel gazing. I don't mind exploring "what ifs", but when it stops being "what if" and starts becoming pure fantasy, it had better come with a compelling narrative.

Because that's the answer to your apparently implied question: What would a world that never had to synchronize time look like? It would look completely alien.