Computer, cellphone, and PDA users in the U.S., from big corporations to individuals, are going to have a major headache this coming week. The U.S. Government, with minimal input from the people, has decided to change the dates when daylight savings time begins and ends. So now we have to worry about computers getting confused as to what time it is. If you don’t have all the necessary “hot fixes” to your software, you may find yourself out of synch. I’m not even sure how this will affect companies and organizations that use time clocks at work, so check your paychecks closely.

It’s bad enough that we even use this archaic method of time keeping. The original idea came from Benjamin Franklin, primarily as a means to assist farmers. It was implemented with the idea of saving energy. But not every state participates, making it very confusing for me personally because I have family in Arizona, which doesn’t participate. So half the year California and Arizona are on the same time, but the other half of the year Arizona is one hour ahead of California.

The whole concept is stupid, especially during our modern era of global communications and commerce. The military and most transportation industries use Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), using the 24 hour clock instead of a 12 hour one. Our concept of “time” has always been based on the rising and setting of the sun. GMT is based on longitude, which makes sense because the earth rotates, exposing the planet to sunlight.

A lot of people have difficulties with the 24 hour clock, where 5pm is 1700 hours. I understand that it can be confusing, because not only do you have to know how to convert it to the 24 hour clock, but you also have to know how many hours different you are from GMT. In California, we are currently GMT+8 which means that when it is 1300 GMT (1pm) in Greenwich, England, it would be 2100 (9pm) in California. 1300 + 0800 = 2100

So why are we messing with the system even further? The worst part is that the government is calling this change an “experiment”, suggesting that they could change their mind if it doesn’t work as expected. If for some reason they decide to change it again, then all of the clocks that are programmed for daylight savings time will have to be reprogrammed yet again.

Personally, I think the whole world should be run on the 24 hour clock and GMT. Set it once and leave it alone!