Clock and calendar.
Various proposals have been made to change Western Civilization’s traditional systems of keeping time.
Swatch introduced Internet Time some years ago. (*) No time zones and a simple, short, unique number like @172 make it appealing. I like Internet Time. It is simple. “The time is at 172.” It works as a supplemental time keeping device. If you are communicating with someone in a different time zone, it is an excellent central reference. Internet Time does not work as a replacement for the regular clock, because people living in different time zones would start work @83 or @274 or @940, for example, depending on where they lived in the world.
New Earth Time, or NET, strives to usurp regular time. (†) Unfortunately, its reliance on degrees as the main unit of time will not work. Degrees are already in use for temperature, geometry, and in metaphors (”degrees of separation”). NET will prove too confusing.
The reform efforts directed against the Gregorian calendar betray an anti-Christianist and anti-Western bias. Why not direct calendar reform efforts at the Muslim calendar, for example? The end result of most of these calendar reform efforts will be to end consecutive 7-day weeks. (‡) The losers here will be all the religions that require penitents to obey a holy day every seven days. If mass confusion is the goal, then I suppose messing up the 7-day-a-week system will work great.
Our timekeeping systems work pretty well. There is no great need to change them. Using Internet Time as a supplemental clock, however, has potential utility.
To get some perspective, we should realize that once men are permanently established on Mars, the real clock and calendar reform efforts will begin.