Demolishing time via the Net

This is really old, but if it was true then, think about what must be going on now.

A group of computer programmers at Tsinghua University in Beijing is writing software using Java technology. They work for IBM. At the end of each day, they send their work over the Internet to an IBM facility in Seattle.

There, programmers build on it and use the Internet to zap it 5,222 miles to the Institute of Computer Science in Belarus and Software House Group in Latvia. From there, the work is sent east to India’s Tata Group, which passes the software back to Tsinghua by morning in Beijing, back to Seattle and so on in a great global relay that never ceases until the project is done.

‘We call it Java Around the Clock,’ says John Patrick, vice president of Internet technology for IBM. ‘It’s like we’ve created a 48-hour day through the Internet.’

Source: Maney, Kevin. "Technology is ‘demolishing’ time, distance". USA Today (24 April 1997). http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cta329.htm. Accessed 25 April 1997.