[pinusc]

You may be thinking of "So You Want To Abolish Timezones" [1]. It's not specifically about .beat time, but it has a pretty thorough explanation of why a universal time would be terrible (specifically, worse than timezones) for day-to-day communication

1: https://qntm.org/abolish

[neilv]

Thanks, but the writeup I'm thinking of was contemporary with the Swatch Beats time, and specifically about it. I guess it was likely a student page at MIT or some other university, so it might no longer exist.

[trompetenaccoun]

Most who have lived overseas will have had experience with relatives or friends calling at ungodly hours because they forgot about the different time zone, made a mistake, or simply weren't aware to begin with. A universal standard time wouldn't change that, people who care not to wake you up would still need to remember the conversion or look it up just like they do now.

It's a nonsense argument against a unified time zone. It's pretty much guaranteed to happen sooner or later, it just makes sense as globalization progresses, communication is instant and global and the world grows closer and closer.

[flymasterv]

It's not guaranteed, because McDonald's has to stop serving breakfast sometime. Whatever they choose becomes the defacto local time zone. And so, what have you saved over just using UTC when you need to talk to someone on the other side of the world?

[ooterness]

You can still have McDonald's Tokyo open at a different time than McDonald's London. Just have everyone label their opening and closing times in UTC and be done with it.

[netsharc]

So, the way it works now?

"I'm in Berlin, my working hours are 7:00 UTC to 15:00 UTC, and I'll be reachable until 20:00 UTC".

Arguably, without timezones, it's much harder to figure out when its daylight in a particular region, so when someone should be reachable.

"Well it's 06:40 UTC, but what time does the sun rise in New York? Has the sun set in Bangkok?". Meanwhile having googled that it's 02:40 AM in NY means I can be assume a normal-working person would be asleep at this time.

[globular-toast]

If you know someone in a different time zone the first thing you establish is when it's ok to call. Nobody cares about sunlight. There are more important things like when do they work, when do they get home etc.

[IggleSniggle]

> Nobody cares about sunlight.

Perhaps that's cultural. Most people in my social circles care quite a bit about sunlight. At home, the evening routines that we do with our children are based on a combination of season and sunrise/sunset. I find it somewhat surprising in fact that this is not at least partly the case for others, excepting of course people that work 3-11 or 11-7 or what have you.