I recently bought a Swatch wristwatch that displays "Internet Time." In Internet Time the day is divided into 1000 "beats" lasting 1 minute, 26.4 seconds each. Beat 000 falls at midnight in Biel, Switzerland, where MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte helped Swatch inaugurate the new system in 1998. The institution of local time, Negroponte argued, is a confusing encumbrance in an era of instant global communication. "The digital world will make our lifestyles more asynchronous," he said. "For many people, real time will be Internet Time."

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