[WAVES]
'In article <6jscqt$8ek$1@its.hooked.net>, declan@well.com (Declan
McCullagh) wrote:
> There's hardly a "wall of silence" in mainstream media. Washington Post
> last week was running one Y2K article a day. Recently I've been writing a
> bunch of articles. Reports about G8 included Y2K mention. NYT/CyberTimes
> has covered Y2K hearings recently. This is all in the last week.
>
> One reason it's slowed down a little since then is Microsoft. Technology
> reporters are generally those who cover Y2K. They also cover Microsoft
> and antitrust. Blame Janet Reno and the Department of Justice for slowing
> the flow of Y2K articles and public awareness.
Besides which, things go in waves. (Perhaps escalating waves, but still
waves. Like a staircase.))
For example, there was the Original Wave of Y2K interest, a long-cycle
wave that begain building 20 or even 30 years ago as programmers realized
their 2-digit date shortcut would eventually cause their programs to bomb
or screw up.
Then there was what I'd call the Second Wave about 10 years ago, when
companies and utilities and whatnot sort of woke up to the fact that
they'd better start converting, or upgrading, or thinking about using
4-digit datecodes and modern programming practices.
The Third Wave was the acceleration of "millenium problem" interest
beginning a couple of years ago. The formation of this newsgroup,
comp.software.year-2000, A few popular articles, squibs in newspapers, and
jokes about the whole thing. I confess that this is when I began to think
it was more serious than just a minor, boring, obscure programming
joke...but even then I thought the effects would be minor. Someone said
"We know the exact date the mainframe will die: January 1st, 2000." I told
this to friends, and thought it was a Good Thing (would help my Intel
stock, etc.).
The Fourth Wave. About a year ago, more sobering, scary, catastrophic
reports began to surface. The Gary North and Ed Yardeni sites came to the
attention of many. It became clear to a lot of folks that the IRS would
not fix their 60 million lines of code, that various utilities and
factories would glitch and shut down, and that their was basically no way
to fix the millions of embedded controllers, hundreds of thousands of
mainframes, and major infrastructure systems.
The Fifth Wave. In the last few months, media and government attention has
escalated dramatically. (I think I helped to get Declan alerted to the
true significance, and now he's one of the savviest of the Y2K reporters.
His rag, "Time," has yet to do a major cover story on Y2K...but I expect
it will. And this will lead us to the Sixth Wave.
The Sixth Wave will be where locker room conversations are about Y2K
issues instead of Monica Lewinsky and Viagra. And where ordinary people
are talking to their friends about getting their money out of the banks
and maybe stocking up on canned goods. This is the "Pre-2000 Collapse," as
the publicity about the Y2K problems triggers the very problems being
forecast.
Personally, I expect this Sixth Wave to hit around late summer or early
fall, triggered by major news reporting or by some barely-aniticpated
major glitch in a financial or factory system. Or by the realization that
the IRS cannot fix its massive problems in time.
(Though it may only be a recession, a 2000-point drop in the Dow, and and
worse problems in the Third World. A la Djakarta, raised to the third
power.)
After this next major wave of interest, the succeeding waves will crest
faster and faster and are almost impossible to predict, Whether the
Seventh Wave is martial law or a run on banks or the Fiscal Year glitch,
and whether the Eighth Wave is rioting in the streets, opportunistic
military actions around the globe, terrorist attacks...well, "hard to
predict."
For myself, I'm making prudent preparations NOW, before the next wave
hits. I'm not yet convinced that a total meltdown will occur (Paul M. is
free to call me a "butthead"), but it seems prudent to spend a few
thousand bucks stocking up on provisions, water, guns, etc. After all,
most of these provisions will still hold their value if the Collapse is
somehow avoided.
I'm not prepared to give up my way of life, to make major financial
sarifices, and to move to a remote location, at least not yet. But buying
rice and beans and gold and guns and water containers and solar
panels...well, it's relatively cheap for the peace of mind it buys me.
Your mileage may vary.
--Tim May
--
Just Say No to "Big Brother Inside"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^3,021,377 | black markets, collapse of governments.
___
Subject:
The Sixth Wave...and other waves in the Year 2000 Problem
Date:
Tue, 19 May 1998 17:43:24 -0700
From:
tcmay@got.net (Tim May)
Organization:
Cypherpunks
Newsgroups:
comp.software.year-2000, misc.survivalism, scruz.general
References:
1 , 2 |
