Tag: time

Categories
culture

Permanent Daylight Saving Time? No, thanks.

As we’re reminded each spring and fall, time changes are disorienting and disruptive. But the renewed movement to make Daylight Saving Time permanent is misguided—maybe even dangerous.

Yes, DST might get us home before sunset in the winter. At what cost, though? The mornings would be brutal. If Standard Time were eliminated, dawn would come ridiculously late to many North American cities:

CityDecember 21 sunrise time if DST were permanent
Chicago8:15 AM
Washington, D.C.8:23 AM
Seattle8:55 AM
Calgary9:37 AM
Anchorage11:14 AM

Few of us enjoy waking before dawn. Imagine if your morning commute and arrival at work happened in the dark, too.

That’s not just an annoyance; it could have serious public health implications. Human circadian clocks thrive when we’re exposed to early-morning sunlight—that’s why light therapy for Seasonal Affective Disorder is often administered immediately after waking.

What would happen if the entire continental population got dramatically less morning sun? The public health impact might be epidemic. ◾

Categories
distraction

Putting screen time to better use

More than three-quarters of all Americans own a smartphone. In 2018 those 253 million Americans spent $1,380 and 1,460 hours on their smartphone and other mobile devices. That’s 91 waking days; cumulatively, that adds up to 370 billion waking American hours and $349 billion.

In 2019, here’s what we could do instead.

Paul Greenberg conducts a thought experiment: what would happen if Americans reallocated the time and money spent on smartphones into more productive activities?

This article is a little silly. It shocks us by quantifying our excessive device time, but it ignores inconvenient questions. For example…

  1. What’s included in “other mobile devices”? Tablet computers fall into that category, presumably. What about e-readers? Laptops? My point: some “mobile devices” can be used for more productive and beneficial activities than others (e.g. reading, work).
  2. Why assume that all smartphone use is bad? Even if we were talking about smartphones on their own, it’s unfair to pretend that phones can’t also be used to read or pursue social justice.
  3. Why single out the smartphone? It’s not as if laziness or self-absorption didn’t exist before the iPhone’s release in 2007. Time wasted on our phones in 2018 would’ve been wasted on TV in 1988 or on radio in 1948.

Still, Greenberg has a point. We claim that we’re “too busy” to launch a new project, read more, or exercise. But what about the time spent thumbing through Facebook, playing Clash of Clans, or binging on Netflix? If we could reclaim just one hour each day from mindless smartphone use—then apply it towards nobler ends—where might we be a year from now? ■

Categories
tech

Why does Apple brag about the Watch’s accurate timekeeping?

Apple Watch

Apple’s marketing copy for the Watch:

High-quality watches have long been defined by their ability to keep unfailingly accurate time, and Apple Watch is no exception. In conjunction with your iPhone, it keeps time to within 50 milliseconds of the definitive global time standard.

Since the Watch was announced in 2014, Apple has touted its extraordinary accuracy. I’ve never understood why I should be impressed by this.

For over a century, quartz oscillators have made it possible to build incredibly precise timepieces. As early as 1929, the federal Bureau of Standards relied on quartz clocks that drifted from actual time by less than half a second per month. These days, even a $10 Casio wristwatch from your local gas station likely loses less than a minute per year—accurate enough for nearly every practical use.

Digital devices—including laptops and phones—also rely on quartz-based oscillators. But they have an additional advantage over “dumb” timepieces: an Internet connection. Using the Network Time Protocol (NTP), our devices synchronize themselves against precisely-tuned time servers on the Internet. NTP keeps our computer clocks within a few dozen milliseconds of “actual” time; that probably explains Apple’s “50 millisecond” figure in the marketing quoted above.

Now, Apple actually claims that the Watch is “far more accurate as a timekeeping device than the iPhone.” This makes little sense to me, since both devices presumably depend on the same NTP servers.

And even if the Watch were somehow slightly more accurate than my other digital devices… should I care? Do average consumers even need the exact time, down to fractions of a second? Are atomic physicists timing their experiments using the Watch? Do NASA engineers schedule booster ignition using Siri? Do international secret agents synchronize their capers by watching Mickey Mouse’s hand? I honestly can’t imagine a realistic scenario where even a few seconds’ aberration makes a difference in everyday life.