It seems to me that it’s allowing more of a standardization of time, down to the minute, than ever before.
I mean, I know about GMT and the atomic clock and “at the sound of the tone, the time will be” stuff, but it was still very easy for people to work off of someone else’s time that might have been a couple of minutes faster or slower than the atomic clock.
But now, with cell phone, cable box, and computer servers apparently running off a similar, if not identical, time source, it’s easier than ever to get a single source for time. Am I off the mark? (I noticed this when my iPad, my city’s buses, and my cel phone all showed the same time down to the minute, which struck me as odd, given that I grew up in a Time Before. :))
Just a few days ago I realized that it’s been years, or rather decades since I’ve seen a movie or TV show were a group of people ‘synchronized their watches’. I’m not even sure I can set the time on my phone.
In fact, I’m kind of annoyed that I have to manually set the time in my car. It’s got XM, it should just grab the time from the satellite signal.
Drat. That foils my time-honored argument: “What does it matter if my watch is accurate to one second a year, if everybody else’s clocks are wrong?”. Now I have to think of another reason to not wear a watch. Got it: Everybody else has the correct time, I can just ask somebody.
It’s like, everybody else has unlimited long distance, so why should I pay for it, too?
I’ve done that. I was in the mall, and went to one of those center aisle kiosks and asked the jewelry girl if she had the time. Without a hitch, she rang up No Sale on the cash register, and tore off the sales slip, and handed it to me. The time was printed on ir, right to the second. So I had it written down on a piece of paper.