Internet Time: When lunchtime is @250

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.