> With timezones: * I want to call my friend in Germany. What time is it for her? I guess I'm UTC-7 and she's UTC+1, so she's 8 hours ahead of me
> Without timezones: * I want to call my friend in Germany. It's the same time here as there. It rises at 13:00 here, but she's a quarter of the way way around the world. I have to look up their typical waking hours. ... What time does the sun rise there? How much does that change over the seasons?
You aren't doing a fair comparison. In your "with timezones" example, you are considering it trivial to look up/remember what timezone Germany is in, but in your "without timezones" example, you are making it out to be more difficult to look up/remember what the "day-hours" of Germany would be.
In a world without timezones, you could just Google "what are they day hours in Germany" just like you can Google "what is the timezone in Germany" now. And in fact, it would be much easier to reason about - if you know that the time is currently 10:00, and the day starts at 18:00 in Germany, then you don't need to do any more math, you can just wait until it's after 18:00 to call her.
> If I live too far from the UTC, the day will change in the middle of my working day. My friend said they'd see me on Tuesday. Do they mean the day that had Tuesday at the beginning of it, or the end? What does "Tuesday morning" mean when morning is at the end of the Tuesday? Is "morning" the beginning of the solar day or the beginning of the clock day?
Again, you're assuming that language would not be different in a world without timezones. It's a completely unrealistic scenario, language always evolves to fit our real needs.
> Without timezones: * I want to call my friend in Germany. It's the same time here as there. It rises at 13:00 here, but she's a quarter of the way way around the world. I have to look up their typical waking hours. ... What time does the sun rise there? How much does that change over the seasons?
You aren't doing a fair comparison. In your "with timezones" example, you are considering it trivial to look up/remember what timezone Germany is in, but in your "without timezones" example, you are making it out to be more difficult to look up/remember what the "day-hours" of Germany would be.
In a world without timezones, you could just Google "what are they day hours in Germany" just like you can Google "what is the timezone in Germany" now. And in fact, it would be much easier to reason about - if you know that the time is currently 10:00, and the day starts at 18:00 in Germany, then you don't need to do any more math, you can just wait until it's after 18:00 to call her.
> If I live too far from the UTC, the day will change in the middle of my working day. My friend said they'd see me on Tuesday. Do they mean the day that had Tuesday at the beginning of it, or the end? What does "Tuesday morning" mean when morning is at the end of the Tuesday? Is "morning" the beginning of the solar day or the beginning of the clock day?
Again, you're assuming that language would not be different in a world without timezones. It's a completely unrealistic scenario, language always evolves to fit our real needs.