[Themaintainers] Talk: Michelle Bastion "Defying the clock’s incessant beat: How Google lied about the time of the Earth and made up its own" (Maintenance Philosophy Technology SIG Thursday 12th March 18-1915 UTC+1 )

[mark young]

Dear All,

We’re pleased to announce the next session of the SPT Maintenance and
Philosophy of Technology Special Interest Group on Thursday 12th March
(18-1915 UTC+1). In this session, we’re excited to welcome Michelle Bastian
(University of Edinburgh) who’ll be sharing her research from her current
book project. Her talk examines the role large tech companies play in
maintaining time standards and explores how power relations come to be
expressed through the maintenance of standards by different actors. If you
would like a link for this talk, email me at mark at markthomasyoung.net

Best,
Mark

Mark Thomas Young
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Oslo
https://uio.academia.edu/MarkThomasYoung

*Defying the clock’s incessant beat: How Google lied about the time of the
Earth and made up its own*

Michelle Bastian (University of Edinburgh)

Thursday 12th March 18-1915 UTC+1

*Abstract: *In this talk I will share a draft chapter from my book
project *Dear
Time: How to make clocks we could love*. In this chapter, I unpack some of
the technical issues that arise in the maintenance of what philosophy
continues to simply call ‘clock time’. Rather than being one time, however,
the time on our clocks arises from the combination of two time standards
which do not synch with each other. That is, earth rotation time (or UT1 as
it is technically called) and atomic time (or TAI) are kept roughly
commensurate through a third time standard called UTC. Since the earth does
not rotate in a highly consistent way, the addition of the little-known
leap second is needed to keep all these times in line. We will follow
Google’s effort to tackle the hiccups that have ensued from the leap
second, in part by creating their own time standard which they implement
during the day of a leap second insertion, and which depends on tricking
servers into setting their time inaccurately. While some philosophers have
called this move a “power grab” (Genosko and Hegarty 2020), I will show
that the lies that Google tells about the time are just one set of many.
Indeed, the ways that system time fails to keep to the ideal of ‘clock
time’ are so pervasive that these “lies” are better read as indicative of
the inherent malleability of global time. Crucially, I will suggest that
the real issue is not that Google, and other players like Microsoft and
Apple adapt time to their needs, but that the wider public doesn’t feel
emboldened to make use of this malleability too.

(In order to avoid confusion regarding the timing of the talks - the
following table clarifies when the talks begin in different locations) (please
note also that due to the difference between daylight savings in the U.S
and Europe, times for North America only will differ from the previous
session)



New York:         13:00

San Francisco: 10:00

London:            17:00

Amsterdam:      18:00
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