bearcub,
Washington DC had hired a middle aged female, to attack their Y2K problems, and I felt she was quite candid about all the 'ifs' involved in her work. They discussed the complexity of developing manual workarounds for systems that she indicated would not be fixed in time. Such problems as handwriting welfare checks, for instance.
The place that was praised was Montgomery, __. Described as near Washington, but not specific as to whether it is a town, city, county or even in which state it is. They showed a shot of the system being jumped forward to 1-1-2000 and the traffic lights at two intersections not missing a beat, shown presumably in realtime on videocams. [They are probably paying for this exercise with traffic tickets generated by those same videocams. . .]
What grabbed me was that this was the first mainstream piece we'd seen that acknowledged that all was not rosy and that there were implications here for the infrastructure management of every city and town in the USA.
I keep coming back to the concept that our entire nation has the potential for becoming a single, monstrous "disaster area," as presidents and governors are so quick to declare when tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and wildfires create havoc on a local basis.
This could truly become "The Big One" and it is going to be every community for itself. We can prevail in local disasters, but the idea of dealing with a national disaster in the Information Age is completely untested.
I'd buy stock in funeral homes, if I thought the financial markets could stay together.
Bill Peavey |
