Conceptualizing Internet Time
So, if you don’t know about it, Swatch Internet Time is an old failed Web 1.0 story almost as great as the CueCat. Back in 1998, some high level execs got together and came to the insight on the internet time is the same all over the world. So they divded up the day into 1000 evenly divded “beats” that are the same all over the world, eliminating time zones. To add adequate webby notation, they insisted that these times be expressed as “@whatevertimeitis,” so right now, for example, its @871.
Needless to say, the thing was basically a total wash. I think it’s biggest claim to fame is that it’s the official time of Nation.1, the online independent nation entirely run by children and the standard on Phantasy Star Online. The main problem is that when you say @930 or whatever, it’s actually still functionally a different time for other people around the world (information that gets dropped out of the internet time system). Our old system is still useful in that it gives a rough sense of what people are actually doing in different places (“Oh, it’s 3 AM your time, you must be sleeping. Or hacking. It’s 9 AM my time, that means I’m eating”)
Admittedly, the whole idea of building a clock for the internet is kind of cockeyed — but got to talking about it with people at the CC Tech Summit reception a few weeks back with Marcus Bornfreund (CC Canada) and I think its a great little exercise. I think the problem isn’t that Swatch went too far, it’s that it didn’t go far enough. Plus, it doesn’t get down to the basic two features of what makes a calendar or clock useful to people:
1) some kind of reliable pattern that you can coordinate activity around (swatch internet time got this much) with other people
2) some kind of standarized information you can extrapolate about the general state of the world or local frame from the state of this pattern (“it’s January — it must be cold. It’s noon, people are going out for lunch” — Swatch didn’t get this part so well)
I’m winging this, but the interesting thing about these definitions is that they don’t require some evenly spaced chunks of time for something to be considered a clock. I could, for example, divide the clock up into something silly with 4 hours, each with different sized hours:
So long as the same things effectively end up happening at each hour and give context to coordinating other things, it’s totally useful as a clock.
So the argument: The calendar/clock was constructed around things that an agrarian society would find useful. The moon/seasons are nice regular patterns that not only allow you to coordinate other things, but also give you information that’s pretty handy if you’re out there farming and slaughtering goats or traveling
This held pretty well even into the industrial period. Physical conditions were pretty important for the main drivers of the economy (winter — > trains), and holding a strict work/play balance was important for regulation of workers, etc.
But it’s technically all obsolete in the information economy. So long as you can hide under seasonless florescent lights and increasingly mix work/play (both in task and also in the innovation of stuff like the Blackberry), these seasonal clocks aren’t so useful anymore at giving information about the world at large (though they remain useful coordinating tools).
I’m thinking it’d be sweet to see a clock tied to the seasons of the information economy and hinged around the market at work. Roughly we’ve had two “internet years” since the 1990s, divided as “Web 1.0” and “Web 2.0” and distinguishable by the development of web/IT market structure, each passing through similar “phases.”
Hour 1 (The “Stallman” Hour) — dormancy, market characterized by Von Hippel’s early adopters and small lead users. Largely noncommercial.
Hour 2 (The “Start-Up” Hour) — mass proliferation and growth of companies fed by VC capital
Hour 3 (The “Brin” Hour) — emergence of leaders, buzzwords enter market discourse
Hour 4 (The “Gates” Hour) — massive, established players are created, consolidation of small firms. Large players broaden their services. New players acquired.
Hour 5 (The “Case” Hour)— economic downturn, collapse, acquisition, few remaining large players remain
Interestingly, there’s existing economic tools that’ve been developed to measure things like market composition. (i.e. The Herfindahl Index). You’d be able to cross-index it with a measure that scapes Google News and other big news sites to measure to speed at which new buzzwords are coming up. So, roughly do-able? (maybe?) Have to look into compiling this at some point…
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AMUSING CODA’s BONUS ROUND
This post randomly spawned a number of amusing other tangential things having to do with internet time: I include them here.
-Internet Time is amazingly, still being flogged on the Swatch site — I’ll have to start trawling ebay for one of the enabled Internet Time watches.
-Plus, it’s pretty great that the website for the CueCat’s creator still looks like it comes out of a decade ago.
-Internet Time Group Is also a name of a blog run by a “Web 2.0” business consultant Jay Cross. Read his short, amusingly cantankerous post about spam here.
