Should we just get rid of Daylight Savings Time?

On my drive to work this morning, I was marvelling at the sun glinting off of the top of one of the many glass buildings that line the road and I realized that the sun was coming up later and later every morning. This morning it was 7:30 before it showed its head. It was then that I realized we were still on Daylight Savings Time.

While a number of people will claim credit for coming up with the idea, I find it interesting that the current version of DST was introduced as a way to save energy by keeping it lighter later. Of course the counter argument was that children will be going to school in the dark, but that did not seem to deter the lawmakers who decided that DST, at least in the US and Canada would run from March to November. Reports analysing the impact seem inconclusive on the savings, which begs the question: If we are going to spend all but four months under DST, why not just make it the de facto standard time? Or go back to the way it was?

Time is a purely man-made concept. Yet we are all slaves to it in some way or another and daylight savings time is one of those concepts that indicates we might actually have gotten it wrong. We have, over time, been increasing the amount of time we spend seasonally adjusted forward an hour to the point that we are spending more time an hour forward than we are spending in our designated time zone. So why not just move forward the hour?

I know it would cause all kinds of havoc, especially with our heavy reliance on computers and those digital time stamps that determine everything from financial transactions to when the building doors open. But what most people do not realize is that computers don't actually use a clock, at least not like we understand it. It is all done by programming magic. So the computer would not care, as long as the underlying code that translates the epoch number to time is working correctly. And we actually know how to do that. Mostly.

So in these waning days of daylight savings time, enjoy the ability to see the sunrise while you are having your morning coffee, and drive safely.