#7, February 3, 1999
The Year 2000. Yawn,
it’s just a round number in one of the world’s many calendar systems, the last
year of the current millennium, not the first year of a new one.
But we know better.
If ancient prophecies
weren’t enough, our technological priesthood has devised a modern millennial
tribulation—the Y2K bug. As the digital counters click toward midnight
99-12-31, we wonder: how many critical systems will turn back the clock 100
years? We worry: will that setback topple a high-tech house of cards, and turn
civilization back 1000 years?
Face it, we are
techno-dependent. Certainly I am. I enjoy typing this column on a computer,
researching facts on the Web, and submitting it through the email. I like
working for the information systems department of a high tech telecom company.
But much more is at stake with Y2K than anyone’s column, or even their career.
Like food. Most of
the grub in supermarkets gets there via an elaborate chain of computer
dependent financial and shipping transactions. Cascading Y2K disruptions could
seriously restrict supplies of the stuff we eat. People are just beginning to
discover the well-documented potential impacts of Y2K. To learn more about the
problem and what you can do, watch this paper for announcements of future
community Y2K meetings (and, if you are “Web-enabled,” check out the links from
Sonoma County’s Y2K website, www.sonoma.ca.us/y2k)
Y2K should scare you,
but it should also make you think. Consider, for example, how not all tech is
created equal. Some technologies, like sonograms for detecting gallstones,
really don’t have a bad side. Others, like biological weaponry, are pure evil.
But most technology can be used for good or ill. That’s clearly the case with
networked computers, or what I’ll call “telecomputercations”.
Telecomputercations can empower productivity, creativity, and learning. It can
also enable “1984.”
Thus, a second Y2K
lesson: technology, of any flavor, should be guided by ecological wisdom, a
view of the long-term big picture. The creators of Y2K were not stupid or
malevolent; they just suffered from a pinched perspective. The turn of the
century was simply over their economic planning horizon. Today, we would be
wise to consider, for example, what perspective guides the genetic engineering
industry, which is tinkering with the very foundations of the biosphere? Is it
a view to the next quarter’s revenue targets, or to the viability of life in
the next millennium?
So what do we do about
Y2K? You may have heard that the Chinese symbol for “crisis” combines the
symbols for danger and opportunity. Y2K is such a crisis. The danger: society
comes horribly unglued, and stays that way. The opportunity: theY2K threat
motivates long overdue changes in how we develop and use technology,
In Peter Russell’s
book, The Global Brain, he speculates about the kind of collective
consciousness that might evolve as a result of a critical mass of humanity
being connected by telecomputercations. But electronic links won’t be enough.
There must be a commitment to community, a global heart. And that heart seems
to grow best at times of crisis, like the days following a major earthquake,
when people stand and work side by side, putting their own interests second to
the good of the community. This global heart is reflected in the practical
advice of a local Y2K activist: “The best (post-Y2K) security is not an assault
rifle, but a prepared neighbor.”
Y2K is like an
earthquake, for which we can predict the date, but not the magnitude. Let it be
a force that moves us to seek the most “appropriate technology:” that which
will carry us into the fourth
millennium.