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Authoritative Reference Points

Time is everywhere, and its confusing.

It's strapped to my wrist, displayed in my rental car (though thankfully I don't have to deal with this) broadcast on the radio, there were two bedside alarms in the hotel, on my sat-nav, mobile phone, digital camera and laptop. Which is not inherently a problem except that many of these sources synchronise automatically, and to do this successfully it needs to know both where I am and what the local time is. And that today the US government has switched to day light saving hours, bless them so one of these is in doubt. And I don't know which time source I can trust.

In a world where current time information is ubitquitous the wrist watch has largely lost its relevance as a time keeping device (though don't expect it to disappear - it still has value). And no device has yet stepped up and completely filled its role as a time source you can always trust on. Yeah I know, you can get your mobile phone to automatically synchronise the current time with the network. When's the last time you really trusted the network? The network operator?

Right now I've either missed my flight, or got another hour to kill.

Writing from Monterey | March 12, 2007 | Permalink