The Y2K Neighborhood

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Y2K and The Human Psyche

Because media coverage of Y2K has been so sparse, such conclusions may surprise readers who haven't been tracking the issue on the Internet. The Worldwide Web fairly buzzes with discussion of the issue.

At the most basic level, Y2K raises just two questions:

1. Could it weaken computing power enough to seriously threaten the infrastructure?

2. Can the problem be managed?

Strong consensus exists that the answer to the first question is maybe, to the second, yes. Why, then, haven't such basic conclusions been more widely reported? The answer to that question seems to lie as much in Y2K's exotic personality as in the modern world's faith in technology. Creating a detailed strategy for managing Y2K brings communities face-to-face with the unprecedented vulnerability that technology has brought to their lives. Although it's a modern myth that technology has set humanity free, frank review of Y2K implies the opposite to many. At the standing-room-only Boulder crowds that attended her lectures on what Y2K means to agriculture, Cynthia Beal described how she came to grips with the issue.

Owner of The Red Barn Natural Grocery in Eugene, Oregon, a retail outlet of organic foods with annual sales of a million dollars, Beal explained that for a long time she flatly rejected claims of Y2K's dangers. Finally she began analyzing the various systems upon which her business depends. She was stunned by what she learned. To illustrate, on the blackboard she drew a pictogram of how a potato grown in South America must migrate through a daunting gamut of interwoven computer and social systems to find its way into a sack of potato chips on her store's shelf. In the event of cascading Y2K disruptions of the type that can't be ruled out, it became clear the likelihood of the potato's uninterrupted journey was roughly that of a snowball's chance in hell. The same is true for most of the merchandise in the modern supermarket, of which there is an average of three days' supply.

'When I finally 'got it,''said Beal, placing a hand over her solar plexus,
'I got it here. It was like, UUUOOOHHH.' She made the low moan of a woman with a case of food poisoning. Throughout the audience heads bobbed knowingly. 'That's it,' a voice agreed.In the five days I spent interviewing people who had gathered for the Boulder conference from all over America--listening to physicians, stockbrokers, computer engineers and others--I learned that stories like Beal's are common.

Nevertheless this is an experience the media tends to discount. Typical is a column that ran in the September 6, 1998, edition of the Dallas Morning News under the headline: 'A Cave In Arkansas--Will Y2K usher in TEOTWAWKI? [The End Of The World As We Know It.] Bryan Elder is sure it will--so sure that he'll be deep beneath the ground on Jan. 1, 2000.'

The story began: ''As soon as I get a cave, I'm going to live in it,' Mr. Elder vowed, wending his way through one Arkansas cavern. 'I'll be the world's next caveman.' Y2K is the pop-culture moniker'

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print