.Beat

[Drablak]

I just got a swatch .beat watch with internet time and I was wondering how many people like the idea of a universal (and decimal) time?

[Drablak]

Ok, for the "what the hell?" vote(s), here is what I am talking about.

It's a fact that people from all around the globe meet on the internet, like we do in CL for instance, and it's sometimes hard to coordinate because of time zones, daylight saving times, etc. So what if there was a universal time for everyone, not GMT, a decimal one that does not care where you are?

[QUOTE]From Swatch (http://www.swatch.com/)No Time Zones
No Geographical Borders

How long is a Swatch .beat? In short, we have divided up the virtual and real day into 1000 ".beats". One Swatch beat is the equivalent of 1 minute 26.4 seconds. That means that 12 noon in the old time system is the equivalent of @500 Swatch .beats.

Okay, so how can a surfer in New York, or a passenger on a transatlantic flight know when it is @500 Swatch .beats in Central Europe for example? How can the New York surfer make a date for a chat with his cyber friend in Rome? Easy, Internet Time is the same all over the world.

How is this possible? We are not just creating a new way of measuring time, we are also creating a new meridian in Biel, Switzerland, home of Swatch.

Biel MeanTime (BMT) is the universal reference for Internet Time. A day in Internet Time begins at midnight BMT (@000 Swatch .beats) (Central European Wintertime). The meridian is marked for all to see on the fa

[Kirth Gersen]

HWC writing...


Being a sucker for all new gadgets like this, I even bought one of those Swatch Internet Time watches back in 1999. Quite nifty, to have the .beats shown along with the local time.

But, being a person who's been using inet time since 1999, I really must say that in my opinion, it is one of those Great Ideas that probably never will be anything more. Sega introduced it into their games, too. Like Phantasy Star Online (which was my major gaming addiction before CL... although that one only lasted 2 1/2 months... CL is now 10 1/2 months and counting! :-) Ericsson started using it in several of their online communities... etc etc. But, simply put, not enough momentum to get the .beat going worldwide. Yet. Ever?

Maybe it is a simple case of the new nifty idea being slightly too complicated compared to the mental calculation required to convert between time-zones...

/abj
HWC Kirth

[Drablak]

I agree with you Kirth, it probably won't catch [:)]

Yet I really like the idea of a metric time, it's not just time zones (with which I have no trouble btw).

I also think that, even if highly unlikely to happen, there exist a possibility for this to be adopted by a number of people.

Time will tell [:D]

HWC/Drablak

[Konoko]

I even bought one of those Swatch Internet Time watches back in 1999
I was looking at getting one of those too at one time...
But there weren't exactly lots of other people using it :)

I installed something on my PB that put that iTime thing on the menu bar in OS 8/9. I also put something on my eMate (I love that eMate!). But I haven't used that internet time thing for ages (it's never really mentioned anywhere I look) but I still have ways of showing it. And I would use it more if it was used elsewhere more!

The @-Time utility from the http://www.vojousoftware.com/ you mention Drablak is what I've been using for a number of weeks just to do timezones stuff (it does that quite well with 1-click menu-time access from the dock). I actually mentioned that utility here a while ago for dealing with all those silly timezones :)

Konoko

[Delirium]

I'd put this is the same category as Esperanto - it may look good on paper and even attract a following in the nerd/geek crowd, but it's very artificial and kind of silly when you think about it. Besides, we already have a perfectly good universal time in GMT.

-Delirium

[Drablak]

Originally posted by Delirium
[snip]... but it's very artificial and kind of silly when you think about it. Besides, we already have a perfectly good universal time in GMT. Any way to measure time is artificial Deli. What exactly do you think is natural in a day divided in 24 hours of 60 mn of 60 seconds? When you think about it honestly, the most "natural" way to measure time is by the natural cycles of the planet, as in a revolution of it. Measuring time in 1/1000th of its revolution is, arguably, much more 'natural' and a lot less 'silly' than using 1/1440th of it.

As for a "perfectly good universal time in GMT": I am talking about a time that is used by everyone, not a reference that is used by everyone. Universal in its use, not in its ability to be used as a reference.

And, as I said, yes it may very well never happen. But it's not because it does not happen that it's for nerds or geeks and that it's a bad idea. You remind me of PC users when they talk about "those mac geeks".

[Himitsu]

Originally posted by Delirium
Besides, we already have a perfectly good universal time in GMT.

I don't understand how GMT can be a universal time when you need to translate GMT into your own time zone to know what time it is. I could say the same thing about PDT if that's the case.

I think the .beat time, and the control strip module is nifty and I just downloaded it, is worthy because if you say to someone that it's @764 on a certain day they won't have to worry about time zones. There are even banners you can put on your scroll to tell people what the time is. That's very neat but, as you said, it won't be of any use unless people start using it and people don't often do that until people start using it.

[Kiriel]

Well if you have to translate GMT into your own time to know what time it is, it's the same as translating beats into your own time. I find GMT actually fairly easy to work with- once you know the GMT offset for your location it's not hard to convert.

Personally I prefer dealing with time zones because it gives me some idea of what times things are for people- beats really don't tell you whether a time is reasonable or not for a certain person, it just adds more conversion.

[Delirium]

And why is 1/1000 more natural than 1/1440? You are trained to think that way because we use a base 10 numbering system. The babylonians used a sort-of-base 6 number system, so number like 1440 would seem more natural to them. Computers use base 2 numbering and 1/1000 is a non-terminating base-2 decimal. For measurements you are going to subdivide, 60 is a great choice -with numbers 10 and under, you can divide 60 by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 and 10 to get an integer, while 100 can only be divided by 2, 4, 5, and 10.

I don't understand how GMT can be a universal time when you need to translate GMT into your own time zone to know what time it is. I could say the same thing about PDT if that's the case.

Err... I could say the same thing about .beat time, but the translation between my local time and beat time is harder because they don't use the same numbering system. In any case, GMT does not switch to PST for half the year like PDT, and GMT is already used globally in communications and navigation. My Mac know what GMT is NOW, and, with a couple of mouse clicks, I can have all my file dates and times recorded in GMT.

And Drabby, your agruments are stating to sound exactly like those who have been pushing Esperanto for years - it looks great on paper, but is completely impractical when you try to implement it in the real world.

[Drablak]

So yes, actually base 12 is even better than base 6 (Babylonians used a base 12 system, not base 6), but the fact is we use a base 10 system. So I see 1/1000 as easier than 1/1440 because I can add in my mind without converting. It's easy to say that base 6 is better, but can you add, substract, etc in base 6? So, maybe I should have said it's not a 'natural' extension of our base-10 system.

And both you and Kiriel don't really get the point. It's not about converting time all the time, it's about using another time scale altogether.

When I was younger we used the imperial system, feet, yards, farenheith degrees, etc. We switched to the metric system, used by most countries now. What it means to change is to get new reference points. At the beginning, if you had those references points in the old system, you have to convert for a while. Then, as those reference points become natural, you don't have to convert anymore.

In my case for example, I had references for length but not for temperature. So, in the beginning I had to convert 30 cm=1 foot, etc. until I could 'see' what a meter was or 25 cm, etc. I had made myself new references. For temperature, since I did not have any reference, it was even easier. I checked temperature everyday and noted how it felt. After a time, as with any system, you know it's confortable to keep 21C inside during winter and that -5C isn't that bad, etc.

Same thing could happen with time. You need a time piece anyway to measure time. In time you get your references, you wake up at @300, work until @500, eat lunch, etc.

That's not the same as speaking a completely new language like esperanto. Maybe one day americans will convert to metric and you'll see that it's not that hard to convert. It's a question of a few references, not a whole new grammar/vocabulary. It's not completely impractical to implement in the real world at all. But it's unlikely to happen because of people like you [:)]

[Kiriel]

If we used beats for everything we wouldn't need to convert, but we'd have different problems. For instance, right now most businesses that are national chains have the same times open and closed in every store. Instead they would have to have a different open and closing time for every time zone. It would require a huge cultural shift and there'd still be things we'd need to convert from zone to zone. So I don't think it's the panacea you think it is. The concept is nice, but regardless of whether we'd use it only for Internet stuff or for everyday stuff too, there are complications that make it problematic. Time is special in that way- since the sun rises and sets at different times throughout the world, there will always be some problems relating to that which make it not compare in the same way as most other forms of measurements.

[Drablak]

Originally posted by Kiriel
If we used beats for everything we wouldn't need to convert, but we'd have different problems. For instance, right now most businesses that are national chains have the same times open and closed in every store. Instead they would have to have a different open and closing time for every time zone. It would require a huge cultural shift and there'd still be things we'd need to convert from zone to zone. So I don't think it's the panacea you think it is. The concept is nice, but regardless of whether we'd use it only for Internet stuff or for everyday stuff too, there are complications that make it problematic. Time is special in that way- since the sun rises and sets at different times throughout the world, there will always be some problems relating to that which make it not compare in the same way as most other forms of measurements. I agree with everything you say, but aren't you the one that buys everything on the web?Who needs opening hours in another time zone? [:)]

Seriously, you're right that time is special in the measurments we use, and it's the reason it's one of the very few that is not yet metricized.

[Akisha]

I agree with Drablak, it is a very interesting system, but, we have to realize that it is internet time, not every day life time. There is a major flaw here: if I ask someone in Clan Lord to meet me at @500 .beats, it might be 12:00 PM for me, and 3:00 AM for them. There is no way to know except time zones. If we wanted to go by a universal time we could just go with GMT, and no time zones. Same difference.