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Livin’ On Internet Time August 31, 2001 There’s innovation, and there’s your pop culture lingo, and then there’s your crass marketing ploys. Sometimes you get all three in one go. Swatch, the rubber watch people, have come up with something that makes Esperanto look like a good idea. Of course, I’m talking about "Internet Time." In a move destined to make future generations look back on the dawn of the Twenty-First Century and scratch their highly evolved crania and telepathically mumble "What the hell were they thinking? " to each other, Swatch has arbitrarily divided the old twenty-four hour day into 1000 "beats." One Swatch beat is the equivalent of 1 minute 26.4 seconds. That means that twelve noon in the old time system is the equivalent of @500 Swatch beats. Notice the use of the "at" symbol, as the standard notation of the "beat?" Oh, it’s so hard to be distantly cool and archly comment on the dis affected at the same time, I’d imagine… Of course, you, too, can buy Swatches that click off beats. And tell people that you’ll meet them at the rave at 937, I suppose, were you so inclined. But the "Internet Time" that I’ve lately become fascinated with is what the hipsters in San Francisco say to short-hand the phenomenon of informa tion usage and how the advent of the ol’ dubdubdub has decreased the half-life of the spotlight. In other words, if Andy Warhol were around today, he’s say that in the future, everyone’ll get seven-and-a-half minutes of fame. You know, because that old seconds-minutes-hours thing was just so last century.

Or, you know, five-point-two "beats."

Anyway.

I’m sure you’ve noticed this in action, if you’ve spent any time on the var ious comic books discussion boards… the odd confluence of the long memory of comics fans juxtaposed with the burn-through rate of interest in the latest hot topic, where packs of folks will worry an issue like a rabid dog with a rag for a day or two until the next new outrage looms into their fields of vision…

Seemingly forgotten, the focus of debate will lie seething until, months

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