Fascinating! I can see how synchronization across distributed systems would cause problems -- lots of requests against the same type of resource at the same time, for example, resulting in a thundering herd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thundering_herd_problem) -- but also how it could be absolutely what you want (like if you want to synchronize clocks across systems, which I guess is exactly what's going on in the OP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_synchronization).
> If you want a job done find the busiest person you know and give them an extra job. This is because the reason they are busy is that lots of people want them to do things because they are good at doing things and that’s why they are busy.
Node allows you to write JavaScript on the server, which is pretty awesome if you're interested in sharing code (validation, etc) on a client-heavy web app.
I don't have any experience with Go or Erlang, but Node's particular brand of asynchrony is all about non-blocking IO. There are no threads -- all instructions happen in one thread.