SWATCH
Swatch as developed "Internet Time"minute 16.4 seconds. Internet time is displayed by @ and three digits, ranging from @000 to @999. .. It divided the virtual and real day into 1,000 "Beats". The internet day starts at midnight(winter time) in Biel, Switzerland, the home of swatch. No more time zones, no more borders, no geographical differences. One world-one timeOne swatch beat is equivalent of 1 minute 26.4 seconds. That means that noon in the old time system is the equivalent of @500 beats.
Their pitch:
Swatch has created a new universal time. The 24 hours of a day are divided into 1000 beats: 1 beat = 1
The thinking is that world can get together on the internet and not have to calculate the zones.
"It's a clever idea," says U.S. software developer Peter Bernard (CNN February 25), 2004. "I mean we have developers in London and Geneva, and I guess it could come in handy if I wanted to call them at a certain time and not wake them up or something."
Mary Lou Jepsen, Alan Kay and Nicholas Negroponte ...
English: Swatch Once Again
English: Swatch Flik Flak Fifa World Cup Spain Edi...Swatch sells a watch that tells "Internet Time".
Bernard was very impressed enough to shell out $80 for Swatch's new Internet Beat watch.
But wait a second. Er...beat. Don't we already have a universal time standard, known as Greenwhich Mean time? But hardly anyone uses GMT outside professional contexts. That's why MIT (Nicholas Negroprone), one of the fathers of the Internet, is backing the "beat".
"This is just the beginning, the beginning of understanding that cyber space has no limits and no boundaries.
Swatch says it had 40 million hits on its Internet Time home page in December 1999, and and 30,000 downlaods of free fostware that lets you count Internet beats on your desk top.
The reaction on the streets: Some love it, others...