互联网与文化en.wikipedia.org
Swatch 互联网时间
Swatch Internet Time
2014 — 2024，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
Swatch Internet Time 是 Swatch 于 1998 年推出的无时区十进制时间制，把一天分成 1000 个“.beats”，以瑞士总部时间为基准。这个维基页面介绍其概念、历史、使用方式以及它为何没有普及。
为什么经久不衰：它是对“互联网统一时间”的经典尝试，常被拿来讨论标准制定、时区与网络文化，今天读来仍有启发。
HN 评论精选
分析 Swatch 互联网时间失败的原因：专有、生不逢时、移动端被锁死。
当人们说比特币是互联网的货币标准时，我就会想到这个：一个互联网的时间标准，类似 UTC 但更人性化。有几件事阻碍了它被采用。第一，它太专有了；基于开放标准的现代倡议更有可能在细分社区立足，就像比特币那样。第二，它生不逢时。当时 Web 已经流行，但还不太实时，聊天有但很极客，几乎没有视频会议或直播，远程工作也远不如现在多，所以同步时间的需求不大。第三，数字手机被制造商和运营商锁死（手表也是），如果没人能开发支持新时间标准的应用，草根运动就很难成长。
mmahemoff查看英文原文
When people say Bitcoin is a money standard for the internet, it reminds me of this. A time standard for the internet, similar to UTC but human-friendly. A few things worked against its adoption. First, it was too proprietary. A modern initiative based on open standards would have a much better chance of gaining a foothold in niche communities, much like Bitcoin. Second, it was before its time (no pun intended). The web was already popular, but not very real-time. There was some chat, but it was pretty geeky, not like Skype or Facebook IM now. And hardly any videoconferencing or live-streaming. And not as much distance working as happens now. So there wasn't that much demand for syncing time. Third, digital phones were locked down by the manufacturers and carriers (watches too). It would be hard for a grassroots movement to grow if no-one could make apps supporting the new time standard.
批评以 Swatch 总部为基准，认为应独立于公司才能推广。
这是个好主意，但我认为 Swatch 犯了个大错：用他们总部所在地作为计算基准。它需要成为一个独立概念，才能吸引其他公司和竞争对手加入。
jber查看英文原文
It was a nice idea but I think Swatch made a big mistake by taking their headquarters as the base to calculate it. It needed to be an independant concept to bring other companies/competitors on board.
认为现有本地时间加时差体系足够好用，UTC 反而增加认知负担。
这不是第一次有人试图改进时区和我们那套日-周-月-年体系，也不会是最后一次。法国大革命时法国人就试过十进制时间。我认为它没流行起来的原因是，我们现有的体系其实没那么糟。如果只考虑本地，一切都很顺。如果我要和新加坡的同事安排会议，我只需记住一个数字 14 并套到我的时间上。我知道此刻新加坡是 21:40，太阳已落山，大家在家准备睡觉。用 UTC 的话，我得记住太阳在 23:00 UTC 升起，做点小算术，推算人们大约在日出三小时后到办公室，等等。再算上伦敦、上海、开普敦、墨尔本的办公室，就乱了。模 24 的算术足够简单，查一个城市的时差也比了解那个城市普通人的作息容易得多。当然，夏令时和奇怪地点会有边缘情况，但 99% 的情况下它都管用。
davidmr查看英文原文
This wasn't the first time someone tried to make something better than time zones and our silly days-weeks-months-years system, and I doubt it will be the last. It probably goes back much further, but I know that the French tried to decimalize time in the revolution when they were rationalizing all the other measurements. (see The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder, without question the finest nonfiction book Ive ever read.) The reason I think it doesn't catch on is that what we have really isn't too bad. If I'm thinking locally, everything works perfectly. If I'm trying to schedule a meeting with my colleagues in Singapore, I just remember a single number, 14 and apply it to my time. I know that right this minute, it's 21:40 in Singapore, and I know that the sun is down, everyone is home and preparing to go to bed. With UTC, I have to remember that the sun rises at 23:00UTC, do a little math, figure people show up in the office around three hours after the sunrise, etc. Toss in offices in London, Shanghai, Cape Town, Melbourne, etc. and it gets confusing. Modulo 24 math is simple enough that anyone can do it, and looking up the offset for a city is much easier than finding out a "normal" person's schedule in that city. Yes of course it gets a little silly with edge cases around DST and strange places (good trivia question: with what city does the South Pole share its time zone? A: Auckland, NZ, where the logistics are handled or anywhere in NZ really), but it works 99% of the time. Could we make it work if we just decided to? Of course! Implementing the metric system was much harder, and we did that (well, most of us did, of course) because there were huge benefits to being on the same measure. Are there equally huge benefits to being on the same time zone? I doubt it.
简洁反驳：需要通用时间就用 UTC 即可。
如果人们想要一个无时区的通用时间参考，他们可以用 UTC，而且没有那套上午/下午的破事。
jgrahamc查看英文原文
If people want a timezone-less universal time reference they can use UTC and none of that AM/PM BS.
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