The Art of Compromise — Global Planning

“Time travels in diverse paces with diverse persons” — Shakespeare

Someone once asked what would happen if we had just one time zone. Indeed, what if? Astronomers and physicists alike, please do not pounce on us just for asking. We know a bit about time zones, how they came to be set up and why they exist to this day.

But what if we did not have them?

Well, no matter what clocks would show on a remote island in southern Pacific, other clocks in a seaside town at the North Sea would be present us with an absolutely identical time.

Would that not be a scheduler’s idea of heaven? No more hair-pulling when trying to arrange a business call among partners scattered in the four corners of the world.

As much as everyone would like that, it is not possible.

The single time zone adoption could never cancel the reality of the Earth rotating round its own axis and orbiting the Sun as well.

We could still imagine all sorts of scenarios: the nocturnal part of the planet is blissfully asleep, while the sunlit one is doing all the work. This would be followed by swapping roles gracefully.

Or a fair representation of both sides, sharing day and night as instances of a cosmic cycle.

The single time zone would become a symbol of living in the same corner of the universe.

It would be somehow poetic, but is that enough? Again, the answer is quite a resounding no.

How about then seeing time zones as an opportunity to practise the difficult art of compromise?

Various incarnations of the widget or app called ‘meeting planner’ are just a tool in the elaborate construction of international meetings. The difficult part is negotiating an agreement armed with a series of conflicting hours.

One time zone would be good, but it is not the answer to it all. An essential ingredient is the awareness that nobody’s time is more precious than someone else’s. That is the great leveller.

From a different perspective, the chief problem with adopting a World Time Zone is one of disconnection between the natural cycle and man-made systems.

Noon and clocks will only be ‘aligned’ within a narrow range of longitude close to the designated Prime Meridian.

Anywhere further away from that chosen Prime Meridian, there would be a the discrepancy between the natural idea of Noon , complete with a sun riding high in the sky, and its formal time notation, e.g. of 1:00 pm.

People in the South Pacific, let’s imagine, having set the Prime Meridian, then get to eat lunch around 1:00 p.m.

Under the same system, of a unique Time Zone, people in Europe would probably have already had their hunger satisfied at 2:00 a.m.

Time Zones seem to acknowledge that the Sun continues to dictate terms, even as mundane as human appetites.

The next topic to explore is quite apparent now: what happens when Time Zones merge into one with global travel and all that 24/7 world?

Next post from Timepieces has already been revealed. Come back to read it in full at the weekend, that is Saturday, January 28.