Ask HN: Why did this idea of Internet Time not work?

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

by alexitosrv • 17 years ago

7 28 17 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

kaens• 17 years ago

Because everybody is already used to telling time in a certain way, and doesn't want to take the time to learn a new one, put in the effort to learn a new one, or deal with the initial wave of missed meetings and general confusion that would result as larger portions of the population moved to a different way of telling time.

parenthesis• 17 years ago

What problem does it solve that UTC doesn't?

Its time unit (1 beat := 1000th of a (mean solar) day) doesn't have any nice relation to the units of time with which people are already very familiar (seconds, minutes, hours).

Kejistan• 17 years ago

What problem does a meter solve that a foot doesn't? Easy conversions between different sized measures of distance. 1000 beats in a day is easier to keep track of than 1440 minutes. Just because its not easily converted to from the units you're used to doesn't make it "bad" (2.54cm to 1 inch?).

lucasoman• 17 years ago

Meters by themselves don't solve anything. But the whole metric system makes a lot of sense; everything is a power of ten, a cubic centimeter equals a milliliter, which makes length=>volume conversion trivial, etc.

From infancy, seconds, minutes and hours are ingrained in our minds. 60 is also a beautiful number, being divisible by 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30. Given a time, like 10:42AM, a person can conjure feelings, instincts and memories about that time. Using a system based on 1000 "beats" would make time measurement meaningless for a very long time.

Outside of the Internet, most "normal" people communicate predominately with people in their own area and timezone, making the benefit of no timezones moot.

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

Just because its not easily converted to from the units you're used to doesn't make it "bad"

You have clearly never met an American machinist. ;)

mooism2• 17 years ago

Most people only have to worry about time zones when they go on holiday, even in the internet age, so they gain nothing.

It forces people to give up familiar concepts of hours, minutes, and seconds, for no good reason.

It forces people in some locations to get used to the date changing during daylight hours (big change if you are used to the date changing at midnight, after or just before you go to bed).

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

A better question might be: why would anyone think this would work?

ryanv• 17 years ago

Indeed. Next up: Why doesn't the world speak Esperanto?

tokenadult• 17 years ago

Why doesn't the world speak Esperanto?

That question is well answered by Justin Rye's FAQ about Esperanto:

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

The short answer is that Esperanto is much harder to learn than Esperantists claim it is, and thus it has never had many speakers, and thus it provides lousy return on investment for learning it. The total number of all Esperanto speakers in the whole wide world (at any given level of proficiency you care to define) is less than the number of new speakers added by English or Chinese in a single year. There will always be much better return on investment of time, money, and effort to learning any of the top dozen or so natural languages than to learning Esperanto. And that's why Esperanto is the language for which tomorrow never comes as to it being widely used as an auxiliary international language.

Studying Esperanto is a fine hobby, and one I have engaged in, but it is a poor solution to the practical problem of communicating with more people who don't know your native language. I say this as a person who has learned multiple languages from multiple language families.

bitwize• 17 years ago

It's promoted by Esperanto Corporation, a front for Shadowloo.

"Of COURSE!"

gry2• 17 years ago

Because 1000 units in one day is simpler in concept than 24 units in one day. A hour has no solar equivalent, unlike a day or year. It is simpler, _less_ arbitrary and parallels most of the world's measurement system. It sends the time zone concept to /dev/null and makes changing clocks for daylight savings unnecessary (though to honor DST, it might be a PITA). The end result: it is explicit without any additional context.

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

Thank you for proving my point.

99.9 people out of 100 would look at what you just wrote with a blank stare.

This didn't work because there's no way to sell it to 99.9% of people. It might be more elegant and simpler mathematically, but you're fighting against centuries of inertia for little to no gain to the very people that would need to adopt this to make it work.

I can't believe we're even talking about this :)

aristus• 17 years ago

Is this a serious question? Internet Time was a marketing gimmick by a watch company. It's like asking why "Bat Time" didn't work.

Me, I'm still holding out for this:

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

trickjarrett• 17 years ago

Two reasons: 1. There's no GOOD reason for this change to happen. It's change for change's sake. Sure it's more logical, but standards of time or measurement aren't changed for just that reason, they get changed when they're shown to be BROKEN and while our current time system is less than optimal, it's far from broken. Blame the Babylonians.

2. Establishment.

Dethroning a company, which has marketing, and products, and such is one thing. But to dethrone a concept requires a great big change, cataclysmic in some ways. Ignoring the first point, Internet time could have succeeded if it only reached critical mass.

Imagine if Twitter decided that starting today they only showed message times in Internet time. Would that be enough for people to quit twitter? Possibly. But would they lose that many people? It's really more about the here and now, so people shrug, call it eccentricity, and the geeks go about educating people trying to make them understand the merits of the new time system.

If it and Twitter hung on, more and more people would come to understand it. This is the first hurdle now behind us.

Many of us Americans understand the metric system, but the government still uses miles, feet, lbs, gallons, etc. So the people then have to begin calling for the social change, and dealing with those who didn't want the change. This is the second major hurdle. Even if a loud and vocal group advocated the change, it would require a great deal of reason to enact the change.

Consider all the clocks that would need replacing. The epic sweeping changes to the clock and watch industry. They would fight tooth and nail to avoid such change. The costs would be astronomical. Sure they'd see a surge in sales from those who adopted the new system, but I doubt they would see much profit after the change to marketing, production, etc.

lutorm• 17 years ago

Why is the US still not using metric? That's a compelling change, which would align it with the rest of the world. And it's still not happening. The chances of the entire world adopting a new time scheme just for the heck of it are zero.

axod4• 17 years ago

Make something people want. People don't want metric. Give up on it... The UK is similarly un-metric. Be proud of it!

md81544• 17 years ago

The UK isn't similarly unmetric. We're, admittedly, in a half-cocked halfway house where food is sold by the gram (and it's legally enforced to be that way), but beer is still by the pint, speed limits and distances are in miles, and temperature is optional. What a mess.

axod4• 17 years ago

Because powers of 10 are less useful than other more useful numbers like 60. That's why IMHO metric isn't generally as useful for day to day uses. eg you get a dozen rolls from the baker so you can divide them between 2,3,4 or 6 people. Getting 10 would be silly.

evetsx• 17 years ago

as someone raised in a family of 5 and now with a family of 5 of my own I'm not entirely convinced.

showerst• 17 years ago

I think time zones are actually pretty useful. If I have to call Frankfurt or Tokyo, it makes a big difference whether it's 4pm their time or 6pm.

If things were the same worldwide then I'd have no idea if it's the middle of the night in the place I'm trying to call unless I've already memorized it. With time zones I can just look at a world clock.

Ask HN: Why did this idea of Internet Time not work?

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