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[Majine]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

Swatch Internet Time (or beat time) is a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 by the Swatch corporation as part of their marketing campaign for their line of "Beat" watches.

Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided up into 1000 parts called ".beats". Each .beat lasts 1 minute and 26.4 (86.4) seconds. Times are notated as a 3-digit number out of 1000 after midnight. So, @248 would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight representing 248/1000 of a day, just over 5 hours and 57 minutes.

There are no time zones in Swatch Internet Time; instead, the new time scale of Biel Meantime (BMT) is used, based on Swatch's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland and equivalent to Central European Time, West Africa Time, and UTC+1. Unlike civil time in Switzerland and many other countries, Swatch Internet Time does not observe daylight saving time.

No timezones, no daylight savings. It seems too good to be true. The metric system of time keeping.

 

[TwntyOneTwlv]

Because time zones are incredibly useful. I don't care when it's midnight in Switzerland, I care when it's midnight in Ohio.

 

[Gonzalez]

Why do you want to make things harder?

 

[Hoo-doo]

Because timezones are actually convenient as fuck.

 

[EchoChamber]

I feel we had a similar thread not too long ago.

 

[JdFoX187]

What's with the anti-time zone lobby as of late?

 

[Tesseract]

i too miss phantasy star online

 

[Majine]

Because time zones are incredibly useful. I don't care when it's midnight in Switzerland, I care when it's midnight in Ohio.

Why does the day have to necessarily start at midnight?

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

Why would we change to something done for a marketing scheme?

 

[CarpeDeezNutz]

It's all a father son Boston ham scam.

 

[Gonzalez]

Why does the day have to necessarily start at midnight?

What?!

I think Vince McMahon is right about Swiss people.

 

[Tesseract]

Why would we change to something done for a marketing scheme?

dat thomas edison tho

 

[AxelFoley]

I feel we had a similar thread not too long ago.

I was about to say. Just last week, matter of fact.

 

[Joni]

Why does the day have to necessarily start at midnight?

Okay, let's just say you need to do business with someone in Australia. At what hour do you call?

 

[AxelFoley]

What's with the anti-time zone lobby as of late?

Anti-time zoners are like the anti-vaxxers of time.

 

[Zeppu]

Why does the day have to necessarily start at midnight?

Here OP, a smart person wrote this just for you a couple of weeks ago:

Before abolishing time zones

I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there?

Google tells me it is currently 4:25am there.

It's probably best not to call right now.

After abolishing time zones

I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there?

It's 4:25am there, same as it is here, of course! Same as it is in New York, Bangalore and Hawaii, at the South Pole and on the Moon.

No, wait.... The terms "a.m." and "p.m." (ante meridian and post meridian) are strongly deprecated now, along with "noon", "midday" and "midnight", because they are now either meaningless or ambiguous. In much of the world, 12:00 is nowhere near the middle of the solar day, if it's even during the solar day. Likewise, 00:00 is nowhere near the middle of the solar night.

Worse, in much of the world, there is still a "7 in the morning" (where "morning" means "the period between solar midnight and solar noon"), but it's at 19:00. Similarly, "7 in the afternoon" is at 07:00. (Even though two hours earlier it was 05:00, "five in the morning".) It varies the world over. "Eighteen noon", anybody?

So, you have to say "solar noon" to refer to the instant when the Sun is at its zenith, and "twelve hundred hours" to refer to the instant when the clock reads 12:00. Similarly "solar midnight" and "zero hundred hours". And you have to use the twenty-four hour clock, it's the only way to be unambiguous.

So to rephrase: I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there?

It is 04:25 ("oh-four twenty-five") there, same as it is here.

Does that mean I can call him?

I don't know.

It goes on in much greater detail and is an excellent explanation of why this is unnecessary and unhelpful.

From the other thread.

 

[zer0blivion]

Why don't we use Star Trek star dates?

 

[WedgeX]

Why would I cede my time preferences to a corporation? Following Britian is bad enough but a corporation? Hell no.

 

[Kinyou]

No timezones would be convenient for setting up appointments. Figuring out when to set that appointment would still be as annoying as ever though.

 

[Drazgul]

Why don't we use Star Trek star dates?

Word, stardates are the only replacement I would accept.

 

[Graphics Horse]

Because it was a marketing gimmick.


What we should do (if you really want to remove time zones and certain numbers being tied to sun positions) is use a zodiac animal based time system based on the direction the earth is rotated to relative to the galaxy, that way you can take numbers out of the equation completely.

 

[Rocket Scientist]

Okay OP, can you elaborate on why this would be better than what we have now? No daylight savings is not an advantage as you can abolish daylight savings within the current system as well.

From the other thread.

I missed this post the last time, thanks! Great post.

 

[DoomGyver]

Timezones are okay, changing the time twice a year for daylight savings is as dumb as a box of rocks.

 

[ShaggsMagoo]

A better solution in my opinion is to just start referring to things as local time/universal time. Sort of like how television stations would always give times as 9/8 central. Internet schedules can just give whatever local time they are at and then the UTC or whatever afterwards. People will just start to learn whatever their time is in UTC in addition to their local time.

 

[JC Lately]

My god people. If you hate time zones so much, use UTC. You already have a solution made for you! Chances are Your watches and your phones already have a setting for it, and this will only become easier the more smart watches take off.

UTC. Use it. Love it. Get over yourself.

 

[ElTorro]

Just so that no nation feels overlooked, we should change the reference point for midnight every week.

 

[Majine]

Okay, let's just say you need to do business with someone in Australia. At what hour do you call?

Around 100 beats, or around 11 AM in Australia.

 

[Zeppu]

Around 100 beats, or around 9 AM in Australia.

You're cheating. You cannot use the concept of 9am. You have to look at a number between 0 and 1000 and know what 'actual' time it is in Australia without any frame or reference which seems reasonable to us in our current system.

Edit: Not to mention you got it wrong first time round

 

[SneakyStephan]

Just stick to GMT it's easier, that marketing crap is stupid

 

[sc0la]

Around 100 beats, or around 11 AM in Australia.

So you have to convert it back into normal time to be useful? Got it.

Edit: Haha stealth edit, you even did the conversion wrong at first lol

 

[morningbus]

Around 100 beats, or around 11 AM in Australia.

That edit, though.

 

[JC Lately]

Okay, let's just say you need to do business with someone in Australia. At what hour do you call?

2200 UTC. Well 2210 or 2230. Give them a chance to get their morning coffe first.

 

[Intheflorsh]

That edit, though.

I think OP just answered his own question.

 

[sc0la]

I don't even mind the metric time or decimal time idea. 0-1000 Ina day? Go for it. But time zones are still crucial to world and interstate communication/commerce, no matter if it's 0400 or 9:00 11:00 in Australia

 

[RumblingRosco]

Edit: Not to mention you got it wrong first time round

Haha stealth edit, you even did the conversion wrong at first lol

That edit, though.

I think OP just answered his own question.

Close the thread, OP just destroyed his own argument.

Regarding the below post: Majine, you realize you just looked at a map to determine what hour you'd call someone in Australia using your beat units? That's awful.

 

[Majine]

Well, 9 AM is what I was going for by knowing the global span is 1000 beats and by looking at a map to sort of calculate the time in Australia.

That's still pretty close to what the actual time was. For someone who hasn't used the SIT ever before, that's efficient!

 

[JC Lately]

Around 100 beats, or around 11 AM in Australia.

We all saw that edit, dude. Fastest thread backfire of 2015 (so far)?

 

[arit]

Using 24h time would at least be a start, I again fear the day E3 comes around and I'll have to do stupid conversions, that get more complicated because some parts of the world refuse using superior 24h time. An universal time disconnected from existing ones would be even better. People use the imperial units and don't complain about the disconnect there...

 

[Rocket Scientist]

How does Swatch determine new year's eve?

Edit: I just used their website to calculate new year's eve in both Serbia and Spain. Both were @000 beats which should be impossible given the distance between the two countries. Why is it using timezones and not giving the actual beats?

http://www.swatch.com/en/internet-time

 

[JC Lately]

Using 24h time would at least be a start, I again fear the day E3 comes around and I'll have to do stupid conversions, that get more complicated because some parts of the world refuse using superior 24h time. An universal time disconnected from existing ones would be even better. People use the imperial units and don't complain about the disconnect there...

It's like everyone in this thread and the last one has me on ignore.

UTC solves all of these problems.

 

[Monochromaticx]

This reminded me of the swatch internet time conversation giantbomb cast had 5 years ago (and why its not very convenient)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hovFbHt3L3w

 

[Intheflorsh]

Well, 9 AM is what I was going for by knowing the global span is 1000 beats and by looking at a map to sort of calculate the time in Australia.

That's still pretty close to what the actual time was. For someone who hasn't used the SIT ever before, that's efficient!

How is having to look at a map just to guess the time in another country any more convenient than doing a time zone conversion?

 

[Stet]

You've pumped yourself up all day, listening to Kōji Kondō on repeat. This is it, the moment you've been waiting for since she started work and you noticed her glancing at your vintage can of Super Mario energy drink every time she passed your desk.

"She's thirsty all right," you've said to yourself each time, because each time you turned to your desk-mate to say it and he's turned the other way and put his headphones on. He must really like music.

But she's thirsty all right. Now you finally believe it enough to do something about it.

There she is, eating her lunch like a sucker. One day you'll roll over in bed and tell her the benefits of Soylent, but that comes later. Right now it's time for action.

You walk over, jingling your lucky Viera-foot keychain in the pocket of your Dockers. You have to jingle it a little louder to get her attention after standing beside her for awhile, but eventually she looks up and starts to ask you a question.

"Yeah." You pull out the keychain. "Like from Ivalice." You wink and she looks down at her food, probably ashamed that she was even going to ask such a stupid question.

"It's cool," you say. And it is cool. You're cool. "Hoth cool," you add.

She laughs for a while inside her head. You understand, because in Japanese culture women are taught not to laugh. You know Japanese culture and you're pretty sure she's Japanese or Korean or something. You're in.

"Hey, why don't we go out tomorrow night?"

"Oh, I..." She looks over at her desk-mate who smiles and puts on her headphones. Everyone you work with really likes music. You can tell she and her desk-mate have talked about this moment. She's nervous.

"I have tickets to this show. It's an orchestra. They play some of the best new music around. You can come with me."

"Um..." she pauses, trying to think of the words she's practiced in the mirror when she imagined this finally happening. She sighs. Obviously the words won't come. She's just too happy. "...Fine. I guess."

You wink. "Sweet." You look up and out the window so the sun can catch your replica Gerudo earring with a subtle twinkle.

"Pick you up at @324."

 

[Zen_Arcade]

Why does the day have to necessarily start at midnight?

Because it has for a very long time and there is no good reason to change it.

 

[Majine]

How is having to look at a map just to guess the time in another country any more convenient than doing a time zone conversion?

In a fair comparison where you don't know either, it's faster.

 

[Konka]

The majority of people on earth don't use the Internet.

 

[JC Lately]

TITS!!!!!!!!


Now that I have your attention, seriously, UTC time. It solves everything.

 

[Hilbert]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time



No timezones, no daylight savings. It seems too good to be true. The metric system of time keeping.

1. No timezones is not the advantage you seem to think it is. Even if it were an advantage for a particular use case, there is already a solution in place called UTC.

2. There are already decimal time systems that have had a lot more thought put into them then the marking department of Swatch put into theirs.

3. Metric time would imply that it fits into the metric system of measurement, which this system does not. In fact the metric system erred in not redefining the measurement of time, and then deriving length from that. It would have been even better for scientific use.

 

[Zeppu]

Well, 9 AM is what I was going for by knowing the global span is 1000 beats and by looking at a map to sort of calculate the time in Australia.

That's still pretty close to what the actual time was. For someone who hasn't used the SIT ever before, that's efficient!

That's not the point though. If the world were to switch to this system, then the concept of 24hr days as well as the point of hours would cease to exist.

At that point you look at your watch and you see it's 100. What time is it elsewhere on the planet? 100. What does that mean though? Is it sensible to set a meeting at 100 with someone in Australia? What about New York? What time does the day start in each of those countries? When are business hours? Actually, what day is it? Does the day in Australia start in afternoon? These are just a few of the problems you'd encounter by removing timezones.

 

[arit]

It's like everyone in this thread and the last one has me on ignore.

UTC solves all of these problems.

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And that's for titles only. UTC had its chance. Also I suppose something new would be easier to use, since it would just be there, without any resemblance to something existing.