alt Hacker NewsI think part of why people's preferences get so different in different sides of a timezone is as much because the hour-wide timezone is too wide. If you asked people to use a thirty-minute timezone or fifteen-minute timezone agreement would be a lot easier, and a lot easier to match local noon to timezone noon for the most people covered.
Of course, there would be just as many arguments against that because people would hate having to learn that many timezones and do that much more timezone math. We finally have the technology to make that easy for a lot of people (phone clocks auto-sync to local time, for instance; most schedules are posted on websites and have computers involved; fewer analog clocks in general remain in the world).
I do like your optimism but most of modern communication isn’t done via meeting invites from Google / MS Office.
I might say to someone on Slack: are you free at 14:00 UK time? Or organise a time on a Zoom call.
Because so much of modern technology is already soulless, I’d hate to see a future where the only practical way to organise some time with someone becomes via business productivity suites.