Cutline Speaks

Snoozing through daylight savings

posted by The Cutline Team on March 10, 2009

By now you've probably figured out most of the U.S. is on daylight savings time (at least I hope you have). Early Sunday morning we lost an hour of sleep to gain another hour of sunlight during the waking hours. 

There's plenty of controversy over daylight savings: the energy savings are debatable, some sources say the switch increases the likelihood of a pedestrian accident, apparently chickens don't like it and it certainly led to a lot of tired eyes on the bus Monday morning. 

This year was different for me in that I had no idea the changeover happened. I made a mental note of it Friday, but by the time Sunday morning rolled around it had slipped my mind. But a great thing happened - every one of the clocks in my apartment automatically switched over to DST. 

I was mostly impressed by my two alarm clocks, which synced with the government's official time signal and automatically accounted for daylight savings. This eliminated the need for me to change a single clock and did away with any reminders that daylight savings took place. 

This minor, but amazingly helpful, feature was an afterthought when I was shopping for a $20 alarm clock. In the smallest way this hints at how the previously "dumb" CE devices are getting better at keeping up with our lives, or simply eliminating a hassle. It's impressive that one government wireless signal with one single function can make this happen - and exciting to imagine what happens when CE devices are able to connect to a data source as deep as the internet. 

Today, the focus isn't so much on saving the daylight by moving clocks ahead as it is on saving energy for these amazing CE devices. There's a very good possibility that the first widespread application of connected devices will be driven by energy efficiency. A lot of companies are looking into "smart grid" technology and with an administration in Washington pushing this idea, our utilities may become the smartest tools in our households.

Now if only they could figure out a way to add more hours to the day... 

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