Internet Time: When lunchtime is @250

By Lim Tri Santosa

BANDUNG (JP): If you communicate with people in other parts of the world, you often need to know what time it is in their country. You can calculate the time difference in your head, but this is tedious, especially if the people you deal with are in many different places. The traditional solution to this problem is an array of clocks on the wall, as you'd see in a 'war room', each showing the time in a different location.

Did you ever wonder why we don't use a common time, a time that is the same, no matter where you are? We have long had such a time: it used to be called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Now it is called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The military calls it Zulu time. It is the time at the zero-longitude. It is the time in Greenwich, England. Now UTC (or GMT) has long been used to record scientific events.

The idea of using the time in England to represent the time here is, well, unappealing. For example, it would mean that here in Jakarta, instead of normal working hours being 08:00 a.m. to 17:00 (5:00 p.m.) WIB (Indonesian Western Time), they would be 01:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. UTC. The range of hours wouldn't be different; they would just have different names. Why in the world would anyone want to try such a thing? Because when it is 01:00 UTC in Jakarta, it is also 01:00 UTC in San Francisco, in New York, in Honolulu and in London. The fun stuff on the Internet doesn't all happen in the same place, or even in the same time zone. Keeping track of scheduled times for online events around the world and converting them to your time can be a job in itself.

Have you ever wanted to participate in an online chat with supporting actors/actresses from the cast of the box office hit Titanic, or bid for stuff at an auction held at the other end of the world? Knowing what time it is someplace else can be critically important.

Well, despite all that trouble, someone new is trying to do all of that, with a twist. The Internet has changed the way we look at many things, and now some citizens of cyberspace are trying to create yet another revolution.

The target this time is time.

Now, the Swiss watchmakers have developed a concept more brash than its trendy timepieces: a new standard of timekeeping called Internet Time. The widespread use of the Internet has spawned a new concept of time called the Swatch Beat (www.swatch.com/internet-time/). Basically, the Swatch Beat is a unit of time that ignores time zones and geographical boundaries.

So, what is Internet Time? Well, it seems to be more of a gimmick than anything else. Internet time is the new global concept of Swatch universal time, where a 24 hour day is divided into 1000 equal beats. One Swatch beat is the equivalent of 1 minute 26.4 seconds (=24*60*60/1000). They claim that is a "revolutionary" new unit of time, where there are no time zones and no geographic borders.

Internet Time is the same no matter where you are in the world (sounds a bit like GMT). A day, in Internet time, begins at midnight (@000) in Biel, Switzerland (the home of Swatch). That means that 12 noon in the old time system is the equivalent of @500 Swatch beats. But @500 is the time at 12:00 p.m. midday Biel time zone or 19:00 (07:00 p.m.) WIB time zone. As a matter of fact, you have your lunch @250, which is equal to 5:00 a.m. GMT.

Confused? No need to be. Swatch provides a handy time converter that helps you get used to the idea of Internet Time.

Swatch didn't just create a new way of measuring time. When you input your local time and date to be converted into Internet time, you should key in your location. Try the Swatch Internet Time converter and see for yourself (www.swatch.com/internet- time/).

Well, as I said, Internet Time is just a gimmick; and it will never catch on with any significance. But one thing I am sure of: Cyberspace has no night and day. People will wake up, sleep, work, and play on more heterogeneous schedules than we know today. What you do tomorrow may be most affected by somebody thousands of miles away.

As the digital world grows smaller, the push for a single time zone gains momentum. Will all Netizens use Internet time? Perhaps, only for a "fashion statement". Others will question the usefulness of the new time in their daily personal lives. Perhaps in time, the Internet Beat will be replaced or forgotten. But it has already caused a lot of people to rethink something fundamental. The Internet has a way of doing that. And so for the moment at least, the beat goes on.