In years past I’d ignore February 29th, leap day, since it didn’t impact me in any way. Not this year, however, since we’re living in an Internet-connected age causing time to become increasingly irrelevant.
Measurement of time is all about being in synch. Since the Earth is just slightly off from a 365 day orbit around the Sun, (to be precise 365.242190 days long), a leap year has to be added roughly once every four years to make sure the calendar remains a valid measurement of a year.
Without measurement of time, getting things done, shipping goods, transporting people, having a church service with everyone showing up together, coordinating and orchestrating process and methods, and just about everything we accept today in a functioning society would be impossible. Without time measurement, something as simple as meeting your friend for a drink after work would likely result in you sitting and waiting…and waiting…or missing your friend altogether.
The germane aspect to this exponential growth in the world getting Internet-connected is the need we’re seeing for ever tighter synchronization between people (calling someone on Skype on the other side of the world means being aware of Greenwich Mean Time and what each other’s time zone is so you’re not calling them at 2am) as well as between machines performing transactions (e.g., financial markets open at various times in the world means any machine in the financial value chain has to be synchronized).
But we’re also seeing less need for synchronization (i.e., asynchronous) with activities previously required to be in synch.