Douglass Carmichael sends around a weekly Y2K e-letter. They are
excellent. You can sign up for it at his site. (Info below).
Diane
Subject: Y2KWEEKX week 34 & 33 issue 35 May 15, 1999
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 21:18:28 -0400
From: "Douglass Carmichael"
To: "Y2K Week"
Y2KWEEKX week 34 & 33 issue 35 May 15, 1999
Shakespeare and Tao Consulting
http://tmn.com/
shakespeareandtao
Douglass Carmichael with Mark Frautschi and Seth D. Carmichael
These weekly notes are part of a dialog built around an evolving set
of scenarios. Consider each issue an impression from the week,
sightings of early indicators, deeper theorizing and thematic
weavings. The scenarios and back issues archived at:
http://tmn.com/y2k
[To Subscribe or Unsubscribe mailto:lyris@lists.tmn.com with message
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NOTE: We have opened a scenario conference in tandem with the
newsletter. Go to
http://www.bigmindmedia.com
register and enter the conference called y2kscenarios.
REFLECTIONS ON THE WEEK: Doug (mailto:doug@tmn.com)
I spoke at a conference last week and felt that the level of active
Y2k concern has moved toward total neutral. The Old maid card of Y2k
not to be held if you want to continue in normal society. The few
there who seemed interested were very thoughtful people, all past
forty, who have worked on their own systems within their own
corporations (this was a wholesalers convention) and are coming out to
see what is going on with others, and are surprised at the low level
of concern they are finding among peers, suppliers and customers.
Several, with intense overseas dependencies, found their contacts in
other countries fully uninformed about Y2k. That included some
distributors in England. But they felt paralyzed by the lack of social
support for thinking.
Underneath the calm however I sense a growing, not a healing, but a
growing split between reality and posture. As organizations are being
pressed to report, the reports must be positive, and the internal way
this is being handled, in most cases, is by narrowing the range of
concern in order to be able to say its going to be ok, because saying
"we can't make it" is just not managerially tolerable. On the good
side, this tension is producing some soul searching about what the
reality is, but shoddy workmanship and CYA seem, in my experience, to
predominate. People are less and less willing to talk, interest is
replaced by the look of people who have just put their parents or a
pet down. No longer discussible.
No blame. Just we need understanding of something so profound. We do
not have a fix for y2k. We do not have a grasp of the problem. The
nature of y2k is such that very few people really feel a motive to get
it fixed. Because it's the old maid problem, or like leprosy, or
incest, Rwanda or alcoholism, it's shunned rather than embraced.
So, no grasp, no fix, no motive.
Overheard on a plane between New York and Boston:
"So what do we do about this y2k?"
"order them to give reports."
"about what?"
"maybe it's a question of procedures?"
"Put it on your list for next week."
These folks didn't want to deal with y2k. I thought of Hell. Or that
Old maid card game. Or the myth of Orpheus. Few want to descend to the
level of details. Just give us the reports, and you remain
accountable.
So we need to accept that we live in a management culture, not a
technology culture. And the managers work for the market, and the
market is king. We do not know if a tech culture is possible. The
implications are enormous. Bob Dylan said, "we have gone too far,
maybe even the light bulb is too far" (New Yorker, may 10). Stephen
Jay Gould speculated that the reason we are not visited by aliens is
because no culture in the history of the universe has been able to
both develop the technology to get here, and survive socially. (In
Full House.)
But we have been here before, and not been able to get a grasp. Linus
Pauling was my freshman Chem teacher, and he was in the midst of his
campaign against nuclear industry. The battleground then was
strontium-90 and its concentration in milk for children. It was
obvious that a large number of small radiation leaks would add up to a
large increase in radiation. Rogue states were discussed in the
fifties and sixties. But we went along. Now we find ourselves, with
China, stolen secretes, Pakistan and middle eastern nuclear
capacities, back on the edge of nuclear terror, with y2k and nuclear
plants being another point of danger. This world was
predicted, and denied. The argument was that it was an unstable
political world. The business/political leadership reduced it to a
technical problem. I recall how nervous the students were (it was
McCarthy time) about hearing any of it. "Just give us the tools for
the career." Students blocked a speaker because they were afraid that
his appearance on campus would jeopardize their summer top clearance
jobs. These are some of the people running much of business in the
90's. others are younger who grew up in an upbeat world of "Increase"
and the skills of surfing the wave of increase to an early retirement
in gated communities and airport clubs on the way to the few
interesting safe places in the world.
Last week I said that y2k is like a number of other issues we handle
badly, such as economy, climate, psychology. I'd like to be optimistic
about humans and technology. Tech is not just the latest from silicon
valley, but speech and print and weaving and fire, cooking and jars,
and cave painting. The promise of technology is that by being smart we
can create artifacts that help us adapt. But so far, for ten thousand
years, tech has created differences, and under the pressure (somewhat
ideological) of necessity, we have been slaves to a few among us
rather than friends to each other. We silly humans are conditionable,
and insight is rare across conditioned boundaries to our thinking
given by teachers and priests and peers and media.
Y2k shows all the symptoms of a gross misunderstanding to our peril.
We do not stay connected. We are putting kids in front of CRT's to
learn, rather than with the passion of another in the form of a
teacher who cares. There is an emerging understanding in the learning
world that in order to learn a child needs to feel the reality of a
love of the topic by another person. It is the co-participation in
shared minds that leads to learning. I love music, I love you. I
believe you can learn music. Absent one of these ingredients, no real
learning can occur.
We think adolescents should be consumers and job holders, and pass
their lives between these two modes. All recreation should be market
consumption. All relationships would be mediated by advertised
objects. Sexuality and violence were repressed until they could be
marketed. The aim of the media now is live sex and live killing, but
not a sensual society that gives rewards outside the market.
So we tend - even those with a humanistic education - to see y2k as a
technical problem to be handled by managers. We do not notice that the
tech has replaced people, and those who are remaining are driven,
anxious, competitive, and disdainful of those who do not "get it."
I think that the 'early adopters' of y2k issues are the ones who tend
to feel that there is a holism to life, not just adaptation to the
moment.
There are those who get it and those who don't. This division seems
very deep. It's a division between those who want to ride the wave of
this economy to their personal paradise, and those who sense something
is wrong as the wave heads towards potential walls, rocks, or, for a
wave, even a smooth shore is dangerous. We do not know which is
correct. Maybe both are, in the sense that there is no way to get off
the wave that will in fact crash. Then what?
Larger framing may help, if not with a solution, at least with
understanding.
I think the emerging wisdom is that instead of the four phases, hunter
gatherer evolving to agriculture to industrial to digitalization, and
us being at the point of an infinitely expanding everyone included
market, we really have another set:
Primate groups
Hunter gatherers
Empire
World wide Connected elites
Entropic meltdown
These frames are important because they sensitize us to emerging
issues and opportunities. The shift from Rubin to Larry Sommers is
considered significant because Sommers will continue the story line of
free market. Thomas Friedman's exasperatingly interesting The Lexus
and the Olive Tree says basically you've got to get on the train. But
then we have lots of people in jail because we don't understand human
nature. We have lots of unhappy kids because we have built an economy
which is not tuned to human nature. We have replaced trust, meaning
relationships of care, with 'trust' meaning 'I will honor my
contract'.
We are building a world with a narrow logic, a kind of stimulus-
response dumbness. Maybe it's a sign of the times that books with the
title "x" for dummies, sell so well, since we are mostly acting dumb.
This last week I read The Lexus and the Olive Tree (see the may 20th
New Yorker for a good review). Friedman wrote one of the better books
about the Middle East, From Beirut to Jerusalem, and he did so because
he experienced the issues and wrote about his experience. Now he is
the NYT foreign affairs correspondent, and he has one message:
Globalization and with it the economy is the new world system,
replacing the cold war. It's a great thesis, and it's clear
that he mulls around with the leaders, and sees others only when they
move into his life space as service providers in hotels, airports,
chancery's. The book is maddening but a very clear picture of the
wowwie zowwie school of "it's the economy stupid."
Try to convince someone who is just buying a house (I just did and
hence missed last weeks issue) or creating a new company, or
transferring jobs that y2k is important. Just as we can't think about
the deeper human psyche and the nature of this economistic culture, or
have good conversations with each other (I've seen men in men's groups
cry at their recognition of their isolation from each other, and women
cry at the results of time spent with men who are so anxious to do it
and be done with it that they either can't touch, or treat the women
like its massage school, or gymnastics warm-ups), we have a hard time
being interested in the human consequences of y2k, or the technology-
business complex. Maybe it will be a woman's issue. And the children.
[snip -- to end]
-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), May 16, 1999.
Douglass Carmichael has some more interesting snippetts in this weeks
newsletter ....
* * *
People are working hard in many cases. But the crunch is on. See John
Koskinen at
http://
www.usia.gov/products/washfile.htm
A meeting held in march about pharmaceuticals illustrates part of the
problem There was an urgent feeling of a need to "get the word out to
the people," but the 'word' is just too boring, and reading between
the lines suggests problems we won't hear about that could make it
interesting.
'Getting the word out' means relax, don't worry, its ok. So we see
that organizations get energized when public awareness could lead to
action that hurts them (banks, pharmaceuticals.). So we will only get
sleep inducing messages. Such messages are the only ones that can
survive through the corporate culture to emerge as public statements.
But the corporate tends to blame others, so now its "international."
Because International is not yet within the club. Note the tendency to
focus on one domain or another, until here is too much pain, and it
stops, when there is a 'good report' forced on the managers of that
industry. So we have an increasing club of ok members, utilities,
states, food suppliers, pharmaceuticals. But soon other countries will
start noticing that if they give out 'we are ok' signs they will be
believed. No one will any longer be suspect.
http://www.va.gov/year2000/
outreach/3.8.99.%20Rx%20Meeting%20Minutes.html
Year 2000 (Y2K) - Pharmaceuticals Acquisition and Distribution Meeting
March 8, 1999 Department of Veterans Affairs
* * *
But then real suspicions will creep back in. Because the Bottom Line:
"As more projects reach their final stages, individuals responsible
for them are feeling a sense of relief and optimism. However, this may
distract us from the fact that the projects are behind schedule --
which may bode poorly for the magnitude of glitches and disruptions
that will occur in those organizations next year. It may also create a
false sense of optimism about the readiness of other organizations in
the economic system. If top management is not paying close attention
to the Y2K status of suppliers, customers, trading partners,
competitors, merger and acquisition partners, and infrastructure
providers, the organization is still at great risk."
PERSPECTIVES: Doug (mailto:doug@tmn.com)
Can you believe:
"Outlook 98 had the date for Memorial Day (US) wrong this year. It
also has Thanksgiving Day (US) wrong this year: Tuesday, November 23
instead of Thursday, November 25." (Thanks to reader C. L. McIntyre
for this one!).
>From a friend "This reminds me of a city in Belgium, I forget the name. At one time it was one of the most powerful cities in the world- a great trader port. It was built just off the coast on a river. Over time, the river needed to be dredged and because all of the inhabitants just kept passing the buck for the responsibility to pay for the dredging project it never happened. Gradually the passage completely silted in and now the city is just a backwater town and not a port at all. With no one taking responsibility for doing the greater good everything slowly declines. Now we are talking about the same phenomena on a global basis."
I received the following from a book about to be published in
Germany..
(1) The y2k problem is the first major challenge of modern
knowledge societies within the epigenetic regime IV. [following
Piaget, etc.. - Doug]
(2) The challenge poses a new type of societal coordination
problem which is characteristic for the epigenetic regime IV and which
has not been encountered in previous societal formations.
(3) The challenge is global and runs throughout the entire world
with a damage potential roughly proportional to the degree of societal
advancement.
(4) The challenge is universal and affects industrial enterprises,
the service sector, utilities and infra-structure, private households
or local and state administrations.
(5) The challenge belongs to the class of most complex and most
densely coupled socio-technological problems.
(6) It affects the machine code bases and their embedded hardware
components, i.e., chips. In this sense, y2k must be considered as a
rare challenge across the two main epigenetic levels of actor networks
and knowledge bases.
(7) It is a self-inflicted and self-propagated "error" in the
machine code. This "error" can be qualified as a typical "frame
problem error", resulting from improper solutions with respect to time
coordination and time horizons.
(8) Due to its embeddedness in steering and electronic control
processes as well as in the relevant machine program bases across
agriculture, industry and services, the y2k problem affects the
fundamental metabolic exchanges and transformations within economic
market networks.
(9) The "error" is central both to actor networks and to the
knowledge pools.
(10) The central error has been propagated for decades both within
the knowledge pools and within actor networks.
(11) The central error has produced a broken machine code and,
thus, disruptions in the (re)production of actor networks after
January 1, 2000.
(12) Due to the shortage of time left, the central error has become
"intractable" by now.
SITES: Doug (mailto:doug@tmn.com)
Y2K curriculum for grades 6 - 12 developed by the New York Times
Learning Network and the President's Y2K Council:
http://
www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/NIE/Y2K/
For an interesting review of some of the tech issues, with lots of
references to Mark Frautschi, see:
http://www.webpal.org/
Beach2.htm
* * *
CLASSICS: Doug (mailto:doug@tmn.com)
>From Raoul Vaneigem's earlier book The Book of Pleasures. (1976).
"Education introduces intellectual separation into the body. The
domestic state we call the family turns the child into a little angel
whose head is directed towards the sky, the peaks, the elite, towards
thought and power. The rest of the body with its cyclopean anal eye,
is limited and firmly fixed to the earth, the lower regions and
repressed world where everything drags its feet, grovels, or hides.
"Every time a woman turns into a mother and rebels at herself the
better to resist the embraces of her child, and her own incestuous
desire, she teaches her body to grow numb, stifle what it feels and
harden into a shell. Thought being thus invested with power of
decision over the body, imposes itself as a distinct entity, which
reproduces the social separation between manual and intellectual work.
In this way the child is initiated simultaneously into the curse on
sex and into its economic reasoning. For him his body becomes what he
has to direct, restrain, dominate and civilize according to the laws
of the power which governs fecality. His head then patiently teaches
in authenticity, to be ashamed of desire and to fear intense pleasure,
which then sends the self into exile and profits appearance.
"You manufacture an infant prodigy in your image and model him upon
that part of trade you have fenced off for yourself. How can you not
see that under the intellectual progress he makes, lies a lost
Atlantis, ruins of a sensual intelligence repressed in times gone by?
Most of the time, the child's understanding that you praise is but his
servile adaptation to the free trade in reward and punishment,
promotion and downfall, power and submission."
* * *
Last week I was at a conference run by some Jesuits on the
implications for health of Eric Erikson's eight stages of man. "A
child was never meant to be raised by a nuclear family".
* * *
Y2K AND YOUTH: Seth (mailto:scarmike@tmn.com)
So I have become a full time Y2k Activist. Connections, phone calls,
meetings and more meetings. There are a number of issues that are of
great concern to me at the moment:
1) We must work together. The Y2k community has splintered into
various factions with agendas and action plans that don't seem to be
connecting. Communication is poor and we are hurting each other by not
working together. If you are part of a Y2k effort, at any level, I
encourage you to work with not against you fellow Y2k activists. Get
in touch with the alliance type initiatives
http://www.coalition2000.org
and
http://www.y2kcenter.org
to name just a few.
2) The President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion is preparing to
announce the nation wide "Community Conversations" campaign but we
don't yet know much about how this effort will be implemented. I
encourage everyone to begin a dialog with their local leaders about
this program. I have the feeling that all of us will need to work hard
to get the best results from this opportunity.
3) Funding. The Center for Y2k and Society
http://www.y2kcenter.org
has set up a grant program for local Y2k initiatives. Contact them and
see if you can get some assistance. I know we all need it and I hate
to see it sit in a back account somewhere because not enough of us
know about it.
4) Event Awareness. I'm amazed by the number of Y2k related events
that I am not aware of until the last minute or until it is too late
to attend. In an effort to stop this gross injustice to the community
I have started a new mailing list y2kevents@onelist.com where anyone
can post information on Y2k events. Local, national and international
activists are welcome to post
event information to this list. If you wish to subscribe visit
http://
www.onelist.com/subscribe/y2kevents
please feel free to share this URL with anyone who might be
interested.
My own take on the Y2k situation leads me to believe that this summer
will be full of activity. At the moment the world seems preoccupied
with other concerns, but we will be seeing and hearing a lot more on
the Y2k front. A number of great initiatives are under way.
Today I sat in on the Washington DC Y2k workshop for Advisory
Neighborhood Commissioners. The attendance was fair, but most of the
commissioners were there because they had to get their identification
pictures taken. After lunch and the photos the group thinned out
rapidly. The overall message of the panelists was your typical "We are
all prepared" statement, but the questions from the audience were well
thought out and there was some obvious concern that the Inner City was
at risk for potential problems. DC's Mayor Williams published a
document "Community Tips For Y2k" that contains some of the strongest
language I have seen from a government office. It does not correspond
to the overall message of "Happy Talk" that we have been hearing thus
far from the government.
Online this week there has been a lot of talk about the KIA commercial
that uses Y2k as an advertising gimmick. see
http://www.kia.com/y2k.html
They make fun of the potential for public panic and say you should
spend your money on a car instead of worrying about whether your bank
will be Y2k ok or not. If only we had the budget that KIA has and
could buy prime time advertising. I've talked about this before but no
one seems to be listening. Maybe if enough of us complain to KIA they
will pay for a PSA that really deals with the realities of Y2k. Maybe
not but it's worth a try. The only email address I could find was
mailto:webmaster@kia.com let them know what you think. If the
government wants to control the public reactions to the Y2k problem
they need to be reaching out with solid informative efforts. My local
post office has just put up a "Y2k Small Business Action Week" poster.
Unfortunately this "Action Week" was over a month ago. Typical.
* * *
As always I am looking for partners for the Y2k Youth Action Network.
If you or anyone you know is working with young people on Y2k related
issues please contact me: mailto: scarmike@tmn.com We have upcoming
meetings on May 26th at the United Way National Headquarters in
Alexandria where we are inviting Non Profits and Organizations that
work with youth to learn more about what they can do to involve their
constituents in Y2k Community Action and on June 9th at the 4H
Headquarters to discuss Youth Action Network agenda items.
On June 12th there will be a DC Citywide "Community Conversation" on
Y2k at the Mayor's Meeting Room at One Judiciary Square. This is open
to the public.
-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), May 16, 1999.