[pinusc]

You may be thinking of "So You Want To Abolish Timezones" [1]. It's not specifically about .beat time, but it has a pretty thorough explanation of why a universal time would be terrible (specifically, worse than timezones) for day-to-day communication

1: https://qntm.org/abolish

[neilv]

Thanks, but the writeup I'm thinking of was contemporary with the Swatch Beats time, and specifically about it. I guess it was likely a student page at MIT or some other university, so it might no longer exist.

[trompetenaccoun]

Most who have lived overseas will have had experience with relatives or friends calling at ungodly hours because they forgot about the different time zone, made a mistake, or simply weren't aware to begin with. A universal standard time wouldn't change that, people who care not to wake you up would still need to remember the conversion or look it up just like they do now.

It's a nonsense argument against a unified time zone. It's pretty much guaranteed to happen sooner or later, it just makes sense as globalization progresses, communication is instant and global and the world grows closer and closer.

[flymasterv]

It's not guaranteed, because McDonald's has to stop serving breakfast sometime. Whatever they choose becomes the defacto local time zone. And so, what have you saved over just using UTC when you need to talk to someone on the other side of the world?