The Long, Painful History of Time

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2021-06-06 16:00:04

ABSTRACT The programming language Common Lisp offers a few functions to support the concept of time as humans experience it, including GET-UNIVERSAL-TIME, ENCODE-UNIVERSAL-TIME, DECODE-UNIVERSAL-TIME, and GET-DECODED-TIME. These functions assume the existence of a timezone and a daylight saving time regime, such that they can support the usual expression of time in the environment in which a small number of real-life applications run. The majority of applications, however, need more support to be able to read and write dates and times, calculate with time, schedule events at specific clock times daily, and work with several time zones and daylight saving time regimes. This paper discusses some of the problems inherent in processing time suitable to humans and describes a solution employed by the author in a number of applications, the LOCAL-TIME concept.

The measurement of time has a very long history, dating back to the first records of human civilization. Yet, the archeological evidence suggests that the concept of time evolved no further than ordinary human needs, and any notion of time remained confined to a fairly short time frame, such as a lifetime past and future. Expressions of measurements of time were brief and imprecise, rife with the numerous and nefarious assumptions humans bring into their communication, consistent with our tendency to suppress information believed to be redundant.

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