Douglass Carmichael, from his Y2KWEEKX week 37 issue 32 April 19, 1999:

The connection between the management view of y2k and possible technical realities is being stretched past the breaking point. There is a possibility that the management view ("hey, it's ok") is correct, but the chain of logic is so weak and motivated by role playing, that it's hard to trust. At least as equally likely is the possibility that the management view is widely divergent from reality. Most judgement is subordinated to economic, not social, considerations.

Government is not an independent referee, nor coach, to social well-being. The press is so fully a part of the game, that we have lost any independent sense of government as the rules setter, or press as the publisher of truth. The press and the policy are driven by the same, not independent forces.

Our images of what is real can shift rapidly, but always appear to be grounded in enough real facts to 'justify' the picture. In truth, our sense of reality is a fine-spun cloth of media and individual expectations, warped by our binding economic social contract. All together there is a tightly woven cloak under which reality lives its own unseen life, growing like mushrooms.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), April 20, 1999

Answers

I believe the same divergence happened at NASA before Challenger!

-- (snowleopard6@webtv.net), April 20, 1999.

Quite charming. Doug managed to succinctly capture everything from our feeling like mushrooms, to the role-playing games the actors we call politicians play, to the mercenary and ruthless way of deciding by money not life, to the complete tandem at this point of the media and government as the new TASS. And yet he does so, so very politely, you notice. A real nice job.

PJ in TX

-- PJ Gaenir (fire@firedocs.com), April 20, 1999.

Thanks Tom.

Yes, hes an excellent writer.

I met him at the Oakland Y2K Around the Bay meeting. Very impressive person. And well-connected to Koskinen, et. al. (Dont hold that against him though -- hope hes a voice of sanity there).

Diane

Douglass Carmichael's Home page

http://www.tmn.com/~doug/

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), April 20, 1999.

See also Dougs Y2K page ...

http://www.tmn.com/y2k/

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), April 20, 1999.