sm5y+@andrew.cmu.edu (Samuel Antonio Minter) (12/20/89)
1988:11:19:03:07 SFT
The real problem, as several have mentioned before is that we are
confusing two different ways of counting when we say that it is 1989. The
original usage would be that this is the one thousand nine hundred eighty-ninth
year Anno Domini (sp?) not that 1,989 years have elapsed since we started
counting. When we say it is 1:17 we mean that 17 minutes have elapsed since
the beginning of the hour. Similarly almost all of our modern measuring
systems start at 0. A stick is a meter and a half long, we do not refer to
the end being at the end of end of the 50th centimeter in the second meter.
Time keeping seems to be one of the few areas where this is not the convention
thus the confusion. If you are not using 24 hour time the way we represent
hours is *very* strange: AM or PM indicates which half of the day you are
currently in, not what has been completed. Also 2 minutes after noon is
conventionally considered to be PM, meaning that the first hour of PM is not
labeled 0 or 1, but 12!!! Then the rest of the hours refer to how many
hours have passed since it changed from AM to PM. Not to mention the
continuing contriversy of which of noon and midnight is 12 AM and which 12 PM.
Twenty four hour notation solves these problems and puts hours on the same
0 starting system as minutes, seconds, and practically every other measuring
system. Moving on to larger time units: We start our months with the 1st
day of the month and we refer to it as such on occation but for the most part
we ignore that when writing dates. Its Jan 1, not the first day of January.
Once again we are opening the doors to confuse the two systems. Similarly
when we number dates the 1st month is January the 2nd Febuary, etc. But
yet once again we just write 1, 2, 3 ... This along with the fact that
we also number years this way means we get dates like 1989-12-20 (or
12-20-1989 or 20-12-1989 for those who prefer those orders) These
type of numerically written dates lead us to the false conclution that
we can read and interpret dates the same way we can read and interpret times
on our digital watches. That is 3:32 means 3 hours and 32 minutes have
passed since the begining of the day (assumming AM or 24 hour) so 12-20-1989
must mean that 1989 years 12 months and 20 days have passed since whenever
the counting was started. Most of us (hopefully) have enough everyday
experiance with the passing of days and months to know that if the date is
1-1-1990, one day and one month have not already passed, but the case
becomes ambiguous when we refer to the year. This type of confusion is
entirely due to the conflict of the two systems of measuring things. The
first is the older one, dealing with discreete units of time that are
seperated and counted as one would count apples. Years, months, and days
are counted as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. instead of measured (xxxx years have
elapsed) because that is how we incounter them in daily life. We treat each
day as a seperate identity, independant of the days around it. We want a
way to identify IT as an entity as seperate from those around it. Very few
of us care how many days have elapsed since the begining of the month, we
only need to know what day our appointment with Mr. Jones is. Hours and
smaller units of time are not encountered as discreetely as days and longer
units are. Since these time periods are so short they seem to slide right
into each other. There is nothing like a period of sleep to psycologically
seperate hours from each other. Because of this all these smaller units are
psycologically ameniable (sp?) to being treated in the same way as we measure
things...amount elapsed since the start.
So we have two seperate systems for indicating time. Each adapted to
its use. The new century and millenium do begin at the midnight between
Dec. 31, 2000 and Jan 1, 2001, but as many people have pointed out it won't
matter one bit. The distinction between the two systems has been blurred
since before we started abbriveiating "the one thousand nine hundred eighty-
ninth year of our lord as 1989 AD. (This also leads to the mistaken assumption
that AD and BC are like positive and negitive with a zero in between.) The
significant event to the masses is that good 'ol 2 rolling over. The actual
passing of the millenia is something that those of us who care can remember,
or perhaps a comment during the the New Year's Celebration Telecasts from
times square in either 2000 or 2001, but is really not something which will
have too much significance. The year is simply not psycologically identified
with a measure of how many years, decades, or whatever have passed ... it
is simply a label to identify when you are talking about. And on Jan 1, 2000
*EVERYONE* (and I think I can say that truthfully) will have to do something
they have never done before. Not put 19 at the beginning of years on forms,
letters, etc. That is the event which will be celebrated.
It is important to *KNOW* though that those agonizing that the millenia
starts at 2001 and not 2000 are RIGHT. The statement that the year 2000
will be in the 21st century because the 1st century only had 999 years is
simply wrong. No one forgot a year or anything of that sort. There
is simply a discrepency between how we write years and dates (1989) and
the origin of that number (the one thousand .....th year AD.) and how
different people interpret dates. Many of us math/science people tend to
like everything to be like a measurement, a system we are very familiar with.
Too bad. The way society writes the date is simply not that way.
I, being the revisionist that I am, write the time and date like
yyyy:mm:dd:hh:mm, subtracting 1 from year, month, and day to make those
more like measurements. Of course very few people understand what I mean
when I say it is 1988:11:19:04:14 SFT. I only regret it is too inconvienient
to put everything in base 10 using only seconds. Imagine talking about
86.4 ks (kilo-seconds) instead of a day!! We could base our "daily" routine
on a 100 ks cycle and get that 27 hour day we all need to get things done!!
Oh well, I guess if I cand get anyone to celebrate on Jan 1 2001 I'll never
succeed in getting people to measure time in seconds past some standard.
Darn!!! I guess I'll stick with SFT for myself. Bye.
1988:11:19:04:20 SFT
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