Precision time is by far one of the worst things humans have invented for use by wider society.
Its definitely useful for things like science, but humans aren’t made to live with that level of precision and planning. Its difficult and stressful to abide by clock time.
What we should be using, if we were halfway smart about existing, is approximate time. Chime the hour and nothing else. If you really want clocks, only have them tick every 10 minutes. Embrace being somewhere “between x time and y time”
In college, I had a professor from Spain, who said that people there often don’t really mind a bit of casual lateness (up to 15 min) because thats just how the culture worked, and it had the effect of being less stressful, without really being a detriment because it was normalized. Now idk if thats true, or even entirely true, but it does make perfect sense.
In really undeveloped places like Africa, acceptable lateness goes up to hours. This is actually not super helpful, if you like getting things done, and “Africa time” is a frequent relief worker gripe.
In medieval times, late fines that didn’t set in for a couple days are recorded.
Your ancestors observing you getting expelled from the tribe for showing up at 8:05 AM 3 times:
Precision time is by far one of the worst things humans have invented for use by wider society.
Its definitely useful for things like science, but humans aren’t made to live with that level of precision and planning. Its difficult and stressful to abide by clock time.
What we should be using, if we were halfway smart about existing, is approximate time. Chime the hour and nothing else. If you really want clocks, only have them tick every 10 minutes. Embrace being somewhere “between x time and y time”
In college, I had a professor from Spain, who said that people there often don’t really mind a bit of casual lateness (up to 15 min) because thats just how the culture worked, and it had the effect of being less stressful, without really being a detriment because it was normalized. Now idk if thats true, or even entirely true, but it does make perfect sense.
In really undeveloped places like Africa, acceptable lateness goes up to hours. This is actually not super helpful, if you like getting things done, and “Africa time” is a frequent relief worker gripe.
In medieval times, late fines that didn’t set in for a couple days are recorded.