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If there are only
two things we’ll all be sick of before the year is out, I’m betting on the song
“1999” and the term “Y2K.” But while “1999” will mercifully fade into oblivion
after New Year’s Eve, Y2K may prove a bit more hardy.
In the unlikely
event there is someone in this hemisphere who hasn’t heard of it, Y2K is
shorthand for “year 2000,” which in turn is nerd-slang for the problems facing
computers and computerized equipment at the turn of the century. Much of
today’s computer programming (and the modified great-great-great grandchildren
of older programs still in use) use just the last two digits of a date to
indicate the year and will interpret the year 2000 as 1900. No one knows for
sure what will happen, but a major industry has sprouted up around keeping
computers worldwide from having a collective cyber-stroke come January 1.
There has been a
tremendous amount of disinformation on both ends of the issue, too much to
address in one column even if I were particularly qualified. I admit that I am
not, though my work gives me fair exposure to people who are. So with that
wimpy disclaimer in mind, let’s look at a couple of the popular schools of
thought.
One goes something
like this: fifty years ago the world ran just fine without computers, and if
they all blink out at once it will run just fine again. This line is an easy
sell since many of us have no idea how pervasive the contraptions are or how
dependent the economies of industrial nations have become.
But consider a
modern convenience we know a little better, the internal combustion engine.
Would it matter if they all stopped tomorrow? Can you walk to your job, to the
places you get your groceries, clothing, and medical care? If you can, would
the goods and services you use be waiting for you? Though it’s a little tougher
to grasp, we are no less dependent on computers.
The other extreme
is the nightmare scenario, that electro-brains everywhere will contract
Alzheimer’s at the stroke of midnight. Power outages, famine, economic
collapse, and riots will follow, capped off by the end of the world, at least as
we know it.
Pretty
frightening, except that while some sectors have been slow to respond, everyone
pretty much has the message by now. To believe that economic survival instincts
won’t kick in where techno-talk has failed, that the Y2K industry will pass up
the opportunity to make one last buck fixing whatever does fail, is to seriously
misunderstand the workings of a free-market society. Still, there is no
complete certainty.
Is the world
coming to an end? Absolutely, but we all know that. The problem is that we
don’t know how, we don’t know when, and some of us don’t know what’s next.
Could Y2K be the trigger? My pastor, who describes his job as “comforting the
disturbed and disturbing the comfortable,” thinks it possible but is mindful of
the Biblical admonition that none will know the day or hour. And that, I think,
is what really scares us – and should.
I recently wrote
that I don’t believe in living every day as if it were our last for the simple
reason that most of the time it isn’t, that many things worth doing take time
and commitment beyond a simple hunger for the moment. I stand by the comment in
that context, but the fact is that none of us know when the inevitable day will
come for each of us to shuffle off our mortal coil and face what comes after.
In that sense “the moment” isn’t something to squander.
On January 1,
2000, the Y2K bug may jolt us back into the Bronze Age or do nothing worse than
shut down two gas pumps in Gridley and a fry vat in Whitefish, Montana. But if
it gets people to think and act on the deeper purpose of their existence in the
process, it will have been worth the scare.
© 1997 – 2002 Brent Morrison
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