Time, Reset

26 October 2008

My computing devices (smartphone, laptop) do not have the ability to ignore daylight saving time. More still, they do not announce whether they use it or not. So this morning when I woke up, I was unsure how late it actually was. I miss the option, somewhere deep in system preferences maybe, which says ‘use daylight saving time or not’.
I do not like the way one of the most essential elements of human experience is automated.

This is progress: ten years or so ago, system updates contained the wrong time adjustments for some time zones. Now, we must blindly trust the machines, or keep an analogue clock for peace of mind.

My parents told me the story how they stayed up late when daylight saving time was introduced, so they could adjust the time at the exact moment.