A quote:

Living in homes whose convenience and mechanical sophistication outstrip the most elaborate factory of a century ago, most of us -- if left to our own devices within a natural environment once considered unusually hospitable -- would be at risk of rapid death. In this sense, our system of domestic conveniences amounts to a life-support system for a badly incapacitated organism. It is as if a pervasive, externalized logic, as it progressively encases our society, bestows upon us something like the extraordinary, specialized competence of the social insects, along with their matching rigidities. What ought to be our distinctive, human flexibility is sacrificed.

The link:

http://www.ora.com/people/staff/stevet/netfuture/1997/Nov0497_59.html#3

-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), January 18, 1999

Answers

Masterful essay. A "perfect" description of the "worst-case" implications of Y2K. Not to break my own arm patting myself on the back, but when I GI about Y2K eleven months ago (upon the reading of Ed & Jennifer Yourdon's book and a night of surfing the net to appraise the "near universality" of the Y2K-beast) the insight you quote from Steve Talbott's essay "dawned" on me in a proverbial flash. Ever since, my wife and I have been preparing our "life support systems" and attempting to spread the "gospel" of "risk of rapid death". . . Thanks for the link.

-- Albert E. Potts (Potts5116@aol.com), January 19, 1999.

Very cool. Completely relevant. Y2K should be not just about preparation but waking up from our drugged stupor. But anyone who thinks even TEOTWAWKI means the end of the machine hive is kidding themselves. To the contrary, the cry, mainly from the surviving pollyanna's, will be, "now we have to do it (computers) right."

As PNG says on his site recently, Y2K is really a cultural problem. Yes, it is. That isn't wooly-headed philosophizing. It's why he wants to stay in Japan even though they're clueless. Post-Y2K is going to have lots of war and death alongside of community and, sooner or later, even more computers.

The hardest work isn't preparing, it's thinking, then preparing, then acting. And considering how individuals (it starts with individuals) can be "in" the system without being "of" it. Sorry, that's as good as it gets until or if someone(s) can speak the utterly compelling word that wakes multitudes of people up. Since that word hasn't been spoken, we don't what the eventual possibility is.

Meanwhile, short-term, you/I had better learn how to stop living like insects if we're to get to 2001 (the date, not the movie).

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 19, 1999.

BigDog, who is PNG and where is his site?

-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), January 19, 1999.

Here truly, is TEOTWAWKI; (when)"Any hopeful glimmer, filtering toward the sympathetic eye of a supportive fellow human from a future only now struggling toward birth, is lost in the darkness between bits of data."

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), January 19, 1999.

PNG is American consultant living in Japan, who comments astutely on understanding the locals. Early GI on Y2K.

http://www2.gol.com/users/png/

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 19, 1999.