[LEAPSECS] The definition of a day

[Kevin Birth]

Culture is shared and learned knowledge.  Consequently, everything this list discusses is cultural--it reflects our sharing and learning of knowledge.

Culture should never be used to justify anything.  There is a gulf between the anthropological view that all human behavior must be understood in its cultural context and the view that because something is cultural it is excusable.  The latter view is untenable.  When my friend and colleague Alex Hinton studies genocide and the cultural factors that contribute to it, he does so to understand how genocide happens, not to justify genocide.

The leap second as part of a complicated system of learning and knowledge associated with time reckoning has cultural consequences, and the decision-making process over whether to keep it or not will involve cultural reactions.  Some of these will seem like technical arguments; others will seem less technical, e.g., anything the US is for some nations will be against.  Lastly, the ITU has its own culture and the delegates at the next WRC will manifest all sorts of cultural dynamics that will influence the vote but might not reflect any sound or cogent technical arguments.

It is an important question as to whether the existence of the leap second or the elimination of the leap second policy will have affect particular cultural behaviors associated with time and timing.  Most of the discussion about the leap second has been with regard to technical issues and the effects the policy has on specific systems.  There has been far less discussion, much less empirical investigation, about the cultural impact.  The cultural effects are far more difficult to ascertain because the cultural impact of the leap second is mediated by western timekeeping which overlays many, many other time reckoning systems and cultural timescales in the world.  As I've pointed out before, most Muslims determine their prayer times by using a software application that is designed by those who know the traditional methods of time reckoning and translate these into clock times tied to specific latitudes and longitudes.  It is a big world with many cultures and it is difficult to tell what the cultural impact of eliminating the leap second will be.  For that matter, we still have an incomplete understanding of the cultural impact of mean time (and consequently, UTC).

Cheers,

Kevin    





________________________________________
From: LEAPSECS [leapsecs-bounces at leapsecond.com] on behalf of Athena Madeleina [athenamadeleina at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2015 10:51 PM
To: Leap Second Discussion List
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] The definition of a day

Cultural aspects have been been used as debating points in these
discussions.  Culture is being used to justify the abuse of women, so
it is important to understand what it means and what it does not mean.
  I have found two things that culture means with regards to the leap
second.

First, anthropologist Kevin Birth suggests that one cultural aspect is
nationalism, which is not entirely English.  He says a British
minister warned that without leap seconds time will move to America,
and also that the French never did accept GMT.   Dr. Matsakis's
viewgraphs say that UTC is referred to as GMT in the British media,
and that nationalistic reasoning was part of the British public
debate.   In an email last year, Dr. Birth suggests that some elements
of the third world might be favorably disposed towards the ITU
resolution because they see it as anti-colonialist.

Some of the other emails make it seem like another cultural aspect
would arise if people's daily lives were altered with respect to the
sun.   Here other people say there are no more cultural aspects to
this than happens now when countries change time zones.  That is
either because countries can adjust by switching their time zone
definitions every many-hundred (or thousand) years, or because people
will get so used to the clock readings being different as they go
about their daily lives that they won't want to adjust.    People have
accused those against leap seconds of deliberately ignoring
predictions that the divergence will be less rapid than previously
thought.

Is there anything else to the cultural aspects besides these two elements?


On 1/30/15, Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> wrote:
> On Jan 30, 2015, at 8:41 AM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
>> Rob loves to quote the archives as if they irrefutably prove his point.
>
> My point is that a coherent approach to systems engineering would be the
> most efficient and robust way to resolve the issue.  Is this controversial?
> And rather, I choose not to ignore the fact that this conversation has been
> going on for many years and that we have already covered many topics in
> great detail.  The list archives are a great source of information and
> analysis from diverse people, which is why we linked to them from
> http://futureofutc.org
>
>> The biggest thing that’s ignored in them is that time zone can and do
>> change all the time.
>
> They do not accelerate secularly.  And the underlying Universal Time can be
> recovered to tie the whole carousel of time zones together.
>
> Rob
>
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