The Toastmasters speech I gave as “A Case for Change”:
“Vendor lock” is the effect of being trapped with a supplier that you would rather be rid of. The reasons vary. From interchangeable parts – Ford vs Chevy, for example – to government monopoly – Medicaid, for example . I’m here to talk about the single most pervasive vendor lock in human history and make the case that it is finally time to break these insidious chains.
Long ago, there was a persecuted minority. In addition to their physical deformity, they were unusually good at math, which is never looked upon highly. Over time, guilds of increasing importance were formed. The zenith of this era was the construction of the tower at Babel. This was followed by invasions by kingdoms more renowned for warriors than mathematicians, breaking the power of the six-fingered Babylonian priests and their ilk. Another cult rises and falls, such is history. Except they left a pernicious legacy: Base-12 and base-60 numbers.
Four millennia later, we’re still suffering under their yoke! Dozens and grosses are still common amounts, standardized even. A myriad has come to mean simply “lots and lots” rather than 20,736, but is still with us. We still measure circles with 360 degrees, having 60 minutes per degree and 60 seconds per minute. Astronomers, no doubt due to their sympathy for ancient mathematicians, have defined the parsec using these units: The distance at which 1 angular second is 1 AU. We still use base-12 time, having 60 minute hours and 60 second minutes.
It is time for this tyranny to end! Let’s not talk about circles, as we have already developed radians and gradians to deal with that. Although both have their issues – sane measuring systems do not include irrational numbers, such as pi – alternatives at least exist. I will focus upon time.
The concept of splitting a day into “light” and “dark” parts is self-evident. For the ancient Babylonians, who lived just south of the Tropic of Cancer, making these parts equal was logical. Using the meridian, the time at which the sun is at its highest point, to determine the middle of the day is logical because it is easy and does not change for any given place. This neatly splits the day into “ante meridian” and “post meridian”.
Then we invented clocks and should have thrown the whole thing out and started over, but we did not. Much later, instead of a standardized, global time, we created chaos with “time zones”, in a not-very-effective effort to keep the middle of the day at the meridian. Then, as if channeling the spirts of the ancient, near-demonic priests who started the whole thing, politicians got involved and created the abomination of Daylight Saving Time, throwing what little was left of the concept of meridian to the curb.
We do need to be somewhat practical. It would be brutally difficult to redefine the second. Physicists and engineers would rise up in revolt, although textbook publishers may approve. It would be even worse to try to define “day” as something other than 86,400 (or so) seconds. While the concept of meridian has been soundly trashed, we do like the fact that days repeat as the sun rises and falls – which is another thing that needs to change. The sun neither rises nor falls, the planet rotates. But absurd English words that do match reality is another, much longer, speech.
Let’s start simple: 24-hour time. “ante meridian” and “post meridian” have been rendered useless. There is no point in using a time system that contains not only useless, but actively wrong, information.
Next step: A single, global time. The failed purpose of time-zones was to keep noon at the meridian and allow standardized coordination of train schedules. After Daylight Saving Time, the concept of meridian is useless. Why bother even trying? Given today’s global interconnectivity, time zones cause more harm than good. I regularly work with five time-zones and it is very confusing. Pick one and use it. As a sop to France we can pick Coordinated Universal Time, which because French, is known as UTC (and is not a time zone). As a sop to Britain, we can pick Greenwich Mean Time, which is sensibly known as GMT. As a sop to the international crowd, we can pick Zulu time, which is the time at the Zero longitude line; “Zulu” is the international radio code for “Z”. They’re all the same.
I can hear you thinking, “he just described a single, global time that already exists. What is Mark proposing?” I am proposing that we USE it. Mountain Standard Time is UTC+7, which means that the sun is rising around 1400 and setting around 2300. If we do not care when the sun is at the meridian, which is the only constant, why do we care what numbers show on the clock when the sun rises and sets, which changes every day?
Even so, we have still not broken the vendor lock! We will have made a horrible system a bit less horrible, but we still have the underlying base-12 numbering scheme. Those ancient Babylonian mutants have had more impact on human society than any other group in history. They played the game of life at the Ultra Elite level and have held the top score for over five millennia. One cannot help but gape in amazement.
The proposals I have put forth have almost no chance of happening. Addressing the underlying problems of the number scheme is nearly impossible. How long will the reign of these monsters last?
Marked Up 