Alex Engelson wrote:
> Also, does anyone have any thoughts on the meme that is the y2k bug
Who's to say that it's paranoia? Maybe those of us who AREN'T
stockpiling guns and freeze-dried rations are the ones who are out of
sync with the situation. There are groups of cobol programmers who were
working on fixing those gazillions of lines of code but have since
decided that there's no way of fixing everything in time, and so they've
purchased ranches in Montana and Wyoming and turned survivalist.
> paranoia?
I don't think any of us have any way of knowing how serious the problem will be. I'm sure someone on the list will claim "expertise" and make an authoritative statement on the matter, but I've heard "experts" say that Y2K will be a hiccup, and I've heard other "experts" say that power, communications, and food distribution will be massivily disrupted.
We've all heard how resiliant systems are supposed to be when they're not organized into strict top-down control heirarchies, but the Y2K bug could be something like a genetic disease that takes down an otherwise healthy organism in its prime.
As to the Y2K meme, well, it gets a big boost from all of the other millenial madness memes. Obviously, it's done quite well so far, but it's prospects for the 21st century are pretty bleak. Sure, it'll get a place in the history books (unless it kills us all and there are no more history books) but if you're still revising the manuscript for your Y2K book or trying to get Terrence McKenna to write the forward, get that sucker to the printer now. Your window closes in about 10 months.
-KMO