Daylight Savings blues

Here's an article in the Boston Globe expressing concern about the potential for proposed changes in the start and end dates of daylight savings to confuse various gadgets, including that most feared of living room devices, our trusty old friend the VCR.

In a previous post discussing the benefits of VOIP telephone services I observed that "systems become simpler as complexity moves from the edges of the network, where it has to be managed by the user, to the centre, where it's managed by the system."

An excellent example of that principle in action is the way devices manage knowing when daylight savings starts and ends, and more generally knowing what the current date and time is. My VCR relies on me to manage that problem for it. My TiVo has its time set automatically by TiVo's central server leaving me out of the loop and letting me concentrate on more important and interesting things (like blogging). Not only is this better for me, but it's a much more robust system because instead of millions of users needing to remember the changes in daylight savings, just one system administrator at TiVo needs to get it right.

Similarly my laptop gets its time from a central server run by Microsoft (surely part of an evil Bill Gates plan to extend the Windows monopoly to time itself) and my cell phone gets it from the Verizon network (which is especially helpful when I cross time zones and proof that Verizon can actually do at least one thing right).

Unfortunately the clocks on my microwave and oven, the clock in my car and my decorative wall clocks and my very expensive gold watch are all dumb like my VCR. The fundamental difference is that they are not networked so there's only once place the complexity can be managed - in my head. But I foresee a future where every device with even the smallest amount of intelligence will be networked for no other reason than to to allow complexity to be managed at the centre and not by me.