Motion for Agora Road to adopt Internet .beat Time.

[waffle]

Hello Agora, beats be with you.

If this is your first time learning of .beats, we welcome you to a new perspective on Time, and would like to catch you up TL;DR:

Swatch Internet Time, or Beat Time, was introduced by Swatch in 1998 as a novel way to standardize time globally. Unlike traditional time zones, which divide the world into regional areas, Beat Time divides the day into 1,000 "beats" each beat lasting 86.4 seconds. With Beat Time, a single, unified time standard can be used worldwide, making it easier for people across different regions to coordinate without needing to convert time zones. Beat time flows linearly from @000.beats to @999.beats.

Travelers of the road have created code, clocks, plugins, and shrines in tribute to our glorious .beatChan.
​

Beat Time can be found in use across several recurring Agora activities that generate participation across multiple timezones and locales. You will find it referenced with an @ symbol followed by 3 numbers such as @042 or @309.

We encourage you to discover what your 'Beat Range' is and how it may overlay your current understanding of Time. For example, my typical waking hours are @583-@250 (What I consider 6AM-10PM local time to me) so I know I could possibly make Movie Night as it happens @041.

Agora Activities - Beat Time:​

Unreal Tournament UT99 Frag Nights Friday @083
Waffles House of Quake: Sunday Service - @750
EUTZ Movie Nights Saturday @792
North American Movie Nights Sunday @042 -- on hold
Gikopoi Hangouts @Various Times
big_ping07's Yume Nikki Online Events @Various Times

Code Contributors:​

Code Monkey​	Code​	Github​	Other​
@vulonkaaz	C - Code	SchizoClock Github	DWM bar beat support
@Captain	beatTime Converter Site and API	.Beat Github	Chrome Extension
@shrapnelnet	C - Code	Beat Github	BeatAPI - ShrapnelNet
@Punp	Javascript		Userscript BeatTime for Gikopoi
@HammerKoopa	GoDotScript
@Andy Kaufman	Bash Script
@llillilll	C for statusbar
@Fauxx	Python		Waybar widget
@Vaporweeb	Rainmeter Skin
@Ashman	Elisp
@garret 427738	PHP Bomb drop
@waffle	Javascript
Other Contributions:			MacOS StatusBar Beat Time

Purveyors, Disciples, and Early Believers in Beat Time:​

Mirchicom, Pluto, Vince, No56, WKYK, Pangolin, HammerKoopa, 2bias, sungen, Gadg8eer, vulonkaaz, Akenshi, Captain, MindControlBoxer, MindControlBoxer Affirms Faith, Punp, TrollKing, Andy Kaufman, Ashman, Fauxx, not my friend Eris, DarkAgent, Waninem, Vaporweeb, Rising Thumb, Some_porcupine

A few highlights of the thread as of Oct '24​

BeatTime Code Wars (who can write the most autistic code):​

Ashman / vulonkaaz
shrapnelnet / vulonkaaz
1, 2, 3
vulonkaaz on optimizing code
llillilll / vulonkaaz
Ashman / shrapnelnet
llillilll / Punp
llillilll / vulonkaaz /Punp

Beat Time Artifacts:​

It's @416 Swatch Beats - GOOOD MOOORNING!!
Sonic Beat Watch
Captain Beat Watch
BeatWatch Lore

Hail to our Glorious BeatChan
beatChan DeskPet Teaser
created by @HammerKoopa

Sexy beatChan
created by @Punp

BeatChan NeoCities Shrine
Travelers denouncing and subsequently embracing beat time.
Live View: UTC-Factory Floor

Additional Artifacts and Images:

If I missed something please let me know and I will update this OP!

I encourage you to read our original motion argument below, browse the thread, and enjoy exploring this tangential path into Beat Time on the Agora Road!

Yours in Time,

-- waffle

(Edited Oct 6, '24 to consolidate lore and add tl:dr. Fixed formatting. Code contributors table. BeatChan Images)
(Edited Oct 23, '24 to update lore, update code contributors table, BeatChan Images)
(Edited Nov 5, '24 - updated HoQ beat time, update code contributors table)
(Edited Dec 2, '24 to add big_ping07's YNO Events which use Beat Time.)

Spoiler: Original Post Argument in favor of .beat Time.

I motion for Agora Road to adopt Internet .beat Time and make it a permanent fixture of this community. As our conversations and activities span across timezones and locales for frag nights, movie nights, and more, I am struck as to why a place like Agora has not attempted to adopt and perpetuate the concept of Internet Beat Time.

"WTF is Internet .beat time?"

Internet .beat Time is a time-telling system introduced by Swatch in 1998, dividing the day into 1000 equal-length units called ".beats". It was designed to simplify global coordination by eliminating time zones, with each .beat representing 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. The system uses Biel Mean Time (BMT) as a universal reference, starting at midnight BMT (@000 Swatch .Beats in Biel, Switzerland), and is the same worldwide.
Wikipedia - Swatch Internet Time
Time and Date - Beat Time Conversions

"So .beat time is just some marketing gimmick that Swatch tried to push in the late 90's in an attempt to cash in on an early Internet hype-caboose express bubble??"

Kind of, but that's exactly the kind of thing right up our collective alley, don't you think?
Marketing aside, it's just the right blend of nostalgic technical bullshit that only select corners of the internet could really understand and apply in a meaningful way.

I believe that corner could be us.

"Why Internet .beat time? That seems ridiculous and confusing. No timezones?"

Right, no timezones. Activities can be synchronized based on a single time instead of worrying about time zone differences.
We have 1 time posted for anyone who wishes to join no matter your own specific locale.
This does require you to 'know' your own personal hours of operation, just like we already do today, but in a slightly different frame.

For example:

My UTC-7 (US Pacific PDT) world, Lets say my active hours are 8AM to 10PM which is @667 through @250 ( .beat time moves linearly @0-@999.beats). The group wants to do frag nights at 20:00 or 8:00PM local time which is @166 and within my typical waking hours.

"Ok sure, fine, but @166 for you is 8PM where for me in New York it's 11:00PM and for my buddy in London that's freakin 4:00AM!"

That's correct, and the point. We can agree on a globally recognized single unit of time.
Agora Frag Night is @166.beats, for me, for all of you. What @166.beats means in your world and if you can meet at that time is on you to decide.

We typically frag from @166 to @250 (2hrs) which in my world (US/PDT UTC-7) is 20:00 - 22:00 (8:00-10:00PM).
For our US New_York/EDT UTC-4 folks, @166.beats is 22:00 - to @250 or 01:00 (11:00PM to 1:00AM)
For our friends in London (BMT UTC+1) @166.beats is 04:00 - to @250 or 06:00 (4:00 - 6:00AM)
Our fraggers in São Paulo Brazil (UTC -3) @166.beats is 00:00 - to @250 or 02:00 (12:00 - 2:00AM)

Although @166.beats may not be the most convenient time for everyone who may want to join, the objective is to achieve coordination with least friction and guessing.
I keep a .beat time widget next to my typical clock to help frame my active beat hours when thinking about temporal boundaries.

My last argument in favor of the motion for Agora Road to adopt beat time and include it in postings when coordinating world-wide events such as movie, radio, and frag nights:

Swatch Internet .beat Time is rooted in niche internet history, criticized for being unnecessary, and mostly forgotten. Agora is exactly the kind of place for this idea find a home and be useful once again. A little bit of javascript could put a constant .beat time clock right in the Agora Road menu bar to ease the understanding and adoption.

Last call for appeal:

Think of that closing scene in Hackers when Razor and Blade have called upon all their rad International hacker friends to kill the gibson.

What measure of time do you think they used to coordinate all of that gibson busting hackering?

If your answer was Internet .beat Time, then you're a winner.


Thoughts?

 

[Mirchicom]

Even if agora doesn't adopt this and this post gets lost to the annals of post history, this would be insanely useful for work as it eliminates the need for me to send someone a timezone converter with my schedule, but more importantly it'd make planning DND an actual breeze

 

[Pluto]

My first reaction was "lol wtf is this schizo bullshit", and I was about to point out how stupid trying to decimize time again would be, but then reading further I was actually kind of convinced. It's not a worldshattering innovation, but as long as it's just a little clock utility on the menu bar then it's harmless at worst.

 

[LostintheCycle]

Internet .beat Time is a time-telling system introduced by Swatch in 1998, dividing the day into 1000 equal-length units called ".beats". It was designed to simplify global coordination

By simply being a new standard that exists, it has utterly failed at this goal.

 

[waffle]

I do need to correct the timeline a bit.

Hackers was released in 1995, and Swatch 'invented' .beat time in 1998. So our friends Razor and Blade would not have used .beat time to coordinate their sweet global hackathon.

Still, regardless sloppy fictional movie timeline, I believe the essence of the argument is sound.

 

[Mew]

Standards

xkcd.com

i feel like just using 24 hour UTC would accomplish the same thing, but yeah i guess it does fit the theme of agora.
i mean if i'm a new user and i see the time of the frag nights in .beat or UTC i'm still converting back to my local time, so what would the difference be? and if i'm new i'm probably not even recognizing the .beat number as a time to convert in the first place... just my thoughts.

 

[McGovern '72!]

>decimal time

Once again, Robespierre is vindicated by history.

 

[ビンス]

I know we just got done talking about this but I didn't understand why you were bringing it up till I saw this post. It all makes sense now. I have no problem listing Frag Night times in .beats but I would just be worried about new people not recognizing it as a unit of time.

 

[№56]

This idea made a lot more sense when I saw how Swatch intended for it to be displayed on a watch face alongside a normal 12-hour clock. While it's effectively just another time zone, it looks different enough from the way time is usually formatted that you can parse which is the local time and which is the international time at a glance without any confusion. If we all had watches like this beat time would be a great idea, but as things are I don't see any real difference between using it and UTC. Implementing it on the site would be fun but not practical.

Alternatively, we could go even further beyond and start using the unix timestamp for everything.

 

[WKYK]

Screw it I think that's cool. Yeah it's extra effort to learn but who cares, it'd be fun. I kinda doubt anyone will start using it here but I still support it. If I ever organize anything I'll try to remember to use beat time.

I would just be worried about new people not recognizing it as a unit of time.

Good

 

[Svind]

I am yet again proven that people will do anything before listing their times in good old GMT

 

[Ross_Я]

This idea made a lot more sense when I saw how Swatch intended for it to be displayed on a watch face alongside a normal 12-hour clock.

Normal clock is 24-hour.
Other than that, I'm pretty sure Agora can do the same thing and just display .beats alongside the clock. And make them 24-hour along the way.

Also, I want our dates to be shown in Eternal September calendar.

 

[Ashman]

Trying to convert .beat into UTC this is some n1ggerlicious crap, So I just take the .beat, multiply 86.4, divide by 60^2, convert into HMS and then that is the hour? since it's off by an hour (maybe DST is to blame?). Hell look this bloody commerical https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4ROTh6gZz3Y even they don't know how it works. Absolute clownshow. And if you don't convert it everyone now has a different conception of what range of .beats are in morning. noon, evening or night. Welp this is a vaporwave forum so vaporware is our thing.

 

[waffle]

Hell look this bloody commerical https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4ROTh6gZz3Y even they don't know how it works.

Hey Ashman, Good MOOOORNING! It's @674 swatch beats!

The concept certainly has its flaws I don't argue that. No matter what you go with someone is getting fucked by DST in the time conversion hell.

This idea made a lot more sense when I saw how Swatch intended for it to be displayed on a watch face alongside a normal 12-hour clock.

The concept does rely heavily on one KNOWING their acceptable beat range, and as a single unit of communicable time I still think the concept could have final-battle foothold in a place like Agora just for funsies.

>decimal time

Sure, but decimal time is missing one key detail. A ridiculous late 90's internet marketing campaign by a flailing swiss watch maker.

Also, I want our dates to be shown in Eternal September calendar.

I like this idea but not sure how it would be represented? @11,293 since split? 30/11/01? YY/MM/DD since split?

 

[eris]

Everyone should just use UTC everywhere and stop getting precious about the time number things happen at. Eating dinner at 0300? not a problem if the sun rose at 1700.

 

[Pangolin]

We could just use EST or Eastern Time as a default time since mostly everyone lives there, and those who don't can just convert it to their local time or whatever.

 

[Pangolin]

I'm starting to like beat time after reading more about it. It looks like a good idea only that it should probably be based off Eastern Standard time, AKA the best time, and the default American time.

 

[vulonkaaz]

everyone should use central europe time as default since basically every intelligent people in the world is in this timezone (except the Chinese but they're not on the Internet)

or we can use relative time instead of saying 8pm I can say in 43 minutes and since everyone see post date in their own format they can easily know when it is

 

[HammerKoopa]

This is fucking retarded i am all down for it! Alternatively we can just make our own Agoran calendar starting... NOW
WELCOME TO YEAR 0 EVERYONE!

 

[waffle]

We could just use EST or Eastern Time as a default time since mostly everyone lives there, and those who don't can just convert it to their local time or whatever.

Sure, so any old clodhopper hayseed yokel can just convert time now. Beat time adds a certain level of gatekeepery that once you know what it means can unlock more of the niche internet space this place occupies.

WELCOME TO YEAR 0 EVERYONE!

Happy New Year Koopa!! <3


It's obvious you all have varying opinions about what the 'STANDARD' should be and how best to represent it.

This is my argument in favor of the 'single timezone' beat model. Imagine just seeing 1 time, Movie night starts at @250. You look up at the clock (or menu bar)and it says @197 which lets you know exactly how early or late you are, without having to do some internal mental conversion.

This seems like exactly the kind of forum to latch onto a dying internet standard of yesteryear just for chucklefuck sake.

Would it have help the argument if I created a Neocities website first?