Our Daylight saving hours will begin early tomorrow morning (Sunday 2:00am), however, in most computer enabled devices, this time change is adjusted automatically.
According to Ginger Adams Ortis, for more than 100 years “the majority of Americans have dutifully set their clocks an hour ahead to “spring forward” each spring and “fall back” into standard time each fall.”
“Consensus is split if the seasonal switches are still worth following—or if the clock has run out on an idea rooted in saving energy during World War I,” adds Ginger.
Sam Lyman, Policy Director at the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation, suggests on The Hill OpEd piece that the daylight saving time should be made permanent.
Congress first passed a bill to add an extra hour of sunlight to the evening hours in 1918 to bring down energy consumption during World War I. It extended DST hours again during World War II and in 1973 during the peak of the OPEC Oil Crisis. In every case, Congress recognized the value of energy during times of global uncertainty and the need to decrease dependence on foreign oil.
According to this NPR reporting, there is a bill in congress to make daylight saving permanent.
There’s a bill in Congress to make it permanent, which would mean never changing our clocks again.
Nineteen states have already made it clear that they’d make the switch if Congress says okay.
This Washington post reporting also suggest that the US congress appears to be finally weighing on permanent daylight saving debate and hopefully we don’t have to change our clocks twice every year.
In an OpEd article on Star Tribune, retired computer engineer H. Richard Jacobson opines that “Using computer technology, we can make clocks that continuously adjust their speed so that sunrise always occurs at the same time, year round. I call this sunrise standard time. These clocks would permanently eliminate the need to set our clocks forward in the spring and backward in the fall.”
But since most of our computers, smartphones and DVRs automatically change the time for us, it’s not as much of a chore as it used to be. Unless you have smart appliances, microwaves and ovens are on the short list of household items that will need a manual adjustment.
– USA ToDay
This CNN article eloquently summarizes the ongoing debate on daylight saving.