Internet Time

One of the most common questions people from the States ask me is, "What time is it there in HK when it's such-and-such time here?" 

The answer is "it depends" -- HK is always either 12 or 13 hours ahead of New York time (Eastern time). Right now, in November (AFTER you've set your clocks back an hour in the States), I am 13 hours ahead of you. That means when it is 8pm Monday for you, it is already 9am on Tuesday for me!! 

(Isn't that wild?!? There's just something crazy about my "today" being your "tomorrow")...

So maybe it takes a minute to wrap your head around it, this "other side of the world" thing -- but naturally, once you "get it" it's not that big of a deal. 

But some people think this whole "time zone confusion" thing is too much -- and they want to "help" us poor boobs out...

I just heard on a TV show when I was eating supper that someone has invented "internet time." Now maybe everyone has heard about this little gem -- I never have. But it may be the stupidest thing I've heard this week...

The idea is that, "Oh, geez, the internet is making things so confusing, when it's 4pm here, what time is it in New York?!?" -- which why would most people care anyway, except when they are trying to catch live webcasts (of sporting events, for instance). But apparently this is a HUGE problem for internet users all over the world, trying to figure out what time a webcast is going to happen if it's in another time zone. So to "standardize" time for people using the internet, they have come up with "internet time" which is broken down into "beats" -- each beat, they said, is approximately 1 minute and 26 seconds, so that it comes out to exactly 1000 beats per day. Each day (1000 beats) begins at midnight Greenwich Mean Time (i.e. "GMT" -- which, by the way, is now officially called "mean solar time of the longitude 0 degrees" -- that's another "shortcut", right?!?). "Internet time" is supposed to really revolutionize life for people on the Net, and Swatch even has a new watch out that will display the time in "internet time" as well as "normal" time...

Now, my FIRST reaction to this so-called "internet time" is that it is stupid. Then when I thought about it for a second, I realized I was right -- it is DEFINITELY stupid. 

FIRST OF ALL, wouldn't you imagine that most webcasts will start "on the hour"? I mean, if a soccer game is being played in London and I want to catch it, won't the game likely be set to start at like "8:00pm London time" or something? I mean, okay, MAYBE it will actually start at "8:05pm" or something because of TV timing, but you see what I mean, the broadcast is going to basically start "on the hour"...

But if you are using this freaking "beats" method, then you would have to somehow calculate what "8pm London time" would equal in measurements of 1 minute and 26 seconds past GMT midnight, if you see what I mean. I'm not sure if all the following calculations are right, but I do know that London time actually is the Greenwich Mean Time (Greenwich's Royal Observatory is in the U.K., duh!) -- so 8:00pm GMT would be: 

                        20 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds = 72,000 seconds past midnight GMT

And if a "beat" is approx. 1 minute and 26 seconds ( = 86.4 seconds to be exact) then that means that the match webcast will begin at:

                        72,000 seconds divided by 86.4 seconds-per-beat = 833.33333333333333333 beats

If we're unlucky enough to have a match that starts at 8:30pm London time, the webcast will begin at:

                        73,800 seconds divided by 86.4 = 854.16666666666666666667 beats

Oh, yeah! You're right! That's DEFINITELY easier to keep track of!!

(Or maybe they think we should start planning sporting events around BEATS, so we can tell people actually ATTENDING the match, "Okay, please arrive at 7:43pm for the start of the match so it's easier for the nerds at HOME to watch it on their computer"!!!) 

But actually the MAIN reason this is stupid is that time zones are NOT that confusing. Go to http://greenwichmeantime.com and type in where in the world the event will be held and it will stinking TELL you what time that is in GMT. I mean, put a bookmark on that site and every time you need to check, pop right to it -- if you're going to watch a webcast then you're already ON the internet, by definition, right?!? 

What I mean is, the stinking "Internet Time" begins at midnight GMT anyway -- IT'S BASED ON GMT, so WHY NOT JUST USE GMT?!?!? I mean, wherever you are in the world, your local time is just GMT plus or minus some whole number (HK is GMT + 8). You just figure out the difference (once!) and then whenever you want to watch a soccer match in London (for instance), you know to add "8" to the London local time and that's what time to get online here in HK. 

So someone, please, somewhere, tell me, how is that so confusing?!? I don't want to fall on the wrong side of universal progress here (insert photo of me wearing an "I still don't use the metric system" t-shirt), but this "internet time" just doesn't seem to actually HELP anything, does it?!?

Whatever. Maybe I'm missing something here -- if you can think of it, please tell me. Seriously.

(You can contact me online each day between 547 and 739 beats)...

This article was first posted: 05 November 2002

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