What additional chapters do we need to add to the book, in addition to the ones listed on my web site ?

-- Ed Yourdon (HumptyDumptyY2K@yourdon.com), August 06, 1999

Answers

Do we share in the royalties for helping you write the book?

-- ~~~~~~~ (~~~~~~@~~~~.com), August 06, 1999.

Missing: Rebuilding of

government (honesty; politicians staying in own district, visiting Washington only four times a year; no $$lobbying; reduction of... etc.)

media (more truth & positive constructive stories, instead of car wrecks, fires and diversions)

industry: less trivial crap; build to last; recycle; less polution; more small/local owned biz (like converting older gas honda cars into battery powered); less greed/more community investment

schools: trash current system, invoke basic math, reading, science, biology without overloading, then invite entrepeneurism; teach farming; cooking; mechanics; don't force computers on anyone

environment: embarras and boycot publically ANY business that does not eliminate or reduce to the max polution

You get the idea - Rebuild.

...NOT repair the stupid systems, methods we have now and stop the psycho-impulse-fast to market and damn the concequenses crap!

-- dw (y2k@outhere.com), August 06, 1999.

...ignore the spelling errors.

Let's not forget:

Food Production: Large and local, communal farms, NO pesticides!

Energy: Local mini-power plants; 20-40% home-power (solar, hydro, etc.)

Media: PRODUCE LOCAL TELEVISION & FILMS to bypass the garbage and illusions of Hollywood and NYC's idea of "what the people want"

-- dw (y2k@outhere.com), August 06, 1999.

After chaos starts to settle - if there are no leaders or direction then people will either revert to what they were doing or be confused.

IF the weasels (one worlders or might-makes-right crowd) try to take control ("order"), then our future and education will be dictated by them.

The book should focus on what life COULD be like aftermath. This concept would have a stronger and more positive effect than any doomsday predictions. Real life science fiction!

Titles? - How to live in the new world (without the new world weasels) - Putting our lives back together again - 2000 BIBLE

-- dw (y2k@outhere.com), August 06, 1999.

Ed, you need a chapter on LOSS

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), August 06, 1999.

Oh and

Banking:

The international and digital dollar cannot be stopped, but local money (State/City/Town) like Ithaca Hours should be implimented.

Margret Thacher was booted out of Parliment because she thought that England and ALL other countries should keep their own idenity (money) instead of making the euro the only currency.

______Rewrite:

Skip the doom senarios* and present a fictional story based on a future society that is locally/regionally based (Jefferson and if the hippies had their way!)

*(anything over a 4 will be the end of the world as we know it today; a 10 would be like Road Warrior (and that topiuc has already been covered)

-- dw (y2k@outhere.com), August 06, 1999.

Government actions that should and should NOT be taken. In many cases, the government should not intervene...because it may well make matters much worse.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), August 06, 1999.

This will be a Handbook For Starting Over and *should* be a best-seller; except while bookstores are functioning nobody will believe any disruptions will happen. You're going to have to prefigure out a new method of Distribution, Ed!
For after the fact.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), August 06, 1999.

Ed,

A portrait of intentional, self-sustaing communities would be inspirational. Helping people focus on a vision is essential.

-- Sara Nealy (keithn@aloha.net), August 06, 1999.

"self-sustaining" communities would be even better ;)

-- Sara Nealy (keithn@aloha.net), August 06, 1999.

Yes to Ashton and Leska's... "Loss". Finding and communicating with loved ones. Creating registrars for displaced persons. Orphans. Letting go of what we cannot keep. Perspective. Vision for Posterity and willingness to sacrifice. How to best make your sacrifices count.

-- Mumsie (Shezdremn@aol.com), August 06, 1999.

Environment is easy, as Heinlein suggests, every INFLOW must be DOWNSTREAM from the OUTFLOW,and executives MUST live within a limited distance of their factories, for at least a specified percentage of the time.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), August 06, 1999.

I agree with Ashton & Leska in Cascadia, you need a chapter on LOSS!

Um, can't help you there.

I'm still coming to grips with my own Mortality.

Good Luck!

Father

-- Thomas G. Hale (hale.tg@att.net), August 06, 1999.

Ed;

You have not addressed the key issue of "Advice for the Future" Lessons Learned:

1) How we got into this mess, meaning why we did not just fix it in 1990, or with some (God help us) Government program to encourage upgrading non compliant systems.

2) When we were alerted to the danger, what worked in getting peoples attention and what did not work. Clearly if we will need to put Humpty back togeather, we did not do a good enough job to keep him from falling.

3) Now that you can Monday Morning Quarterback, what could we have done differently to avert the fall.

In conclusion, a chapter on reviewing the "Game Tapes" is known method that teams use learn from their mistakes. Hopefully this will not be needed again in my lifetime, but as a manuscript, you can pass this information to those in our future.

Thank you for all of your efforts.

Helium

-- helium (heliumavid@yahoo.com), August 06, 1999.

Agriculture, food distribution, genetic engineering adding to post Y2K woes' Monsanto's Terminator Technology where seeds do not reproduce. thank you for all you do.

-- (y2kfallback@yahoo.com), August 06, 1999.

Ed and all, complex problems require a knowledge of how complexity and/or systems work. I suggest some tools for thinking are needed; if not in the book, at least a thread of links and bibliography.......Also I expect Y2K may level the playing field in some areas, eg energy production (I love mad scientists with free energy devices). Where will new ideas find a national forum for their disemination and discussion, and the protection of their originators?......Tim

-- Tim Johnson (timca@webtv.net), August 06, 1999.

Ed - would suggest the entire tone of your book bend towards the

"(re)building of trust" and "establishment of balance"

some smart alec will probably come along and say that this is easy - just get rid of all lawyers.

IMHO - we as a society need a collective kick in the pants. We have become entirely too bored with our lives and have thus felt compelled to meddle in everyone else's life. You need only to read a few (thousand) laws on the books at the local, state and federal level to realize this. This constant need to solve everyone else's problems for them (whether it is wanted or needed) has put us into a tail chasing spin. That is why our government (local, state AND federal) exists. I am not a writer - and cannot express myself very well about this - hopefully you get the point. Maybe I can sum it up with this very crude sound bite:

"quit whining and your taxes will be reduced" = if you provide no incentive for goverment involvement, they can't invent an expensive process to resolve the issue and charge you for it for the rest of your life.

okay - back to my original point. after survival y2k on the scale you propose - we must first and foremost learn to trust again. Not just the government - but businesses and our neighbors as well. We have over the last century evolved from a handshake to complex legal documents in establishing that trust. Which way do we go? Simplify and regress...or add a few more pages of legalese? Dunno.

And balance...once again, folks can't have it both ways - have to learn to meet in the middle, compromise. Cooperate and graduate.

anyway - please don't let your book become another rendition of the blame game. In Nov 2000 it will be way too late for this. If your scenario holds and there really will be a national election - then it is time to move forward - with a purpose.

thanks for asking....

-- justme (finally@home.com), August 06, 1999.

Ed,

So glad to see you're 'up and at em" again.You very possibly will be needed muc more in the afterglow og y2k than you were before.

What I think is vitally important in the post mortem of calamity such as I thinkk we will see, is to give people a new beleif system a new pwrspective with which to deal with all the chaos, uncertainty and the collapse of their tradiaitonal beleif systems. When all you have beleived in , fails you and the rest of the world, seemingly hope in what you thought was true and strong is gone, the human codition requires an infusion of new hope, new reason, new purpose for being. . the human condition requires a " vision" a light, a torch of faith to carry forward into the new millennium.The sad thing is that those things, institutions, faiths, prophecies, etc that people used to beleive in will have let them down; the Armageddon propphecies will not have come true, leaving many churhs now empty; the govenrment's stone buildings of beauracy willl have crumbled under the weighr ofmiscalculated information.....and those, particularly the younger generation who, for reasons unfamiliar to me, have grown up trusting only in themselves, 9what an ego trip) have now found out that they are not who they thought they were when confronted with disaster beyond theri means....and then again sadly to say, those of us who thought we knew our friends will have found out all to soon in the chaos that they were not friends at all.....what will we have left to beleive in? More importantly, why should we bother? Wuat will the vision need to be: or have to be? this, I think is, of course, the Eternal Question....always has been and always will be. But it is one that we need to address.........thanks, Margo mskains @msn.com

-- Margo Fell Skais (mskains@msn.com), August 07, 1999.

I'm not suggesting this as a stand-alone topic, but somewhere in our discussion we need to consider that leadership that comes from the local and neighborhood level will be vital in coping and rebuilding. Our culture is so permeated with cynicism, a sense of entitlement, and the idea that somebody "in power" is responsible for fixing whatever isn't meeting our expectations for the way things should be. Whether it's directed at the school principal or teacher, the PTA President, someone running a petition drive for a stop light, or the way the governor responds to a natural disaster, there are too many people on the sidelines looking for sinister motives and belittling whatever efforts are being made. More often than not, these are people who are so negative and offensive in their outlook that their lives are a mess; no one would look to them for leadership because they are always looking to someone else to fix everything. A handful of relentless, well-spoken, but negative people can suck the life right out of a problem- solving discussion, and undermine the whole process of voluntary association and cooperation. If you own the company, you can fire them. But in voluntary or mandated situations, you only have the choice of avoiding them or working to limit the impact of their destructive nature/behavior, work which eats up alot of time and energy. In a local/neighborhood response situation, the people who will roll up their sleeves and say, "I think we should _________, but I don't know how to (or can't) do it myself; can you help?" -- these are going to be the folks at the grass roots who will be trying to take responsibility, not for making the problem, but for trying to find a way to deal with it. They may not have all the answers, but they have the faith that they and their neighbors have the ability to work together to make things better than they are at the moment. Somewhere in our rebuilding "culture" we have to figure out a way to nurture and protect this impulse, and to protect emerging leaders from the whiners and takers. Alot of people will be so consumed with rage and fear, stuck focusing on what isn't going right. Those of us who can get to a better place psychologically, will have to help each other sustain it.

In a grassroots effort, there is no command structure in place to make anyone do what they are not willing to, and all leadership and association is voluntary. We need to give thought to this, because our culture now carries alot of toxic threads regarding local and self control. If we don't replace these threads with better ones, they will impede local coping and recovery. The rebuilding can't happen if people can't/won't pool resources, motivation, knowledge, and ideas.

-- Kristi (KsaintA@aol.com), August 08, 1999.

I'm speaking from the perspective of a Mom of six young boys. Your book will be focusing on life ten months after the roll-over right? But how about a chapter just on holding things together.

Things like:

If you haven't stored any food or water or made any type of preparations, what can you do? If you weren't able to pay off your mortgage, how to keep your home. What to do if you do get kicked out of your home? If you have stored food and water, how do you keep others from turning against you and stealing it? How do you organize people to work together instead of fighting over who should be in charge?

There are, of course, many other questions that could be answered.

The reason I think there should be something addressing these issues is that if you can't make it through those first horrible months, there won't be a future to work towards. Period.

-- Momx6 (ckhott@urec.net), August 08, 1999.

COMMUNICATIONS!

Broadcast style--AM, FM, SW

Citizen's Band

Amateur

Citizen's/Private mail service---assuming USPO won't be very functional

Communications will be required during 'rebuilding' particularly if the Internet folds.

I suggest that everyone include CB/amateur in their preparations.

I've been a ham sinc 1955 and spent 2.5 years as a radio operator with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Without commo...rebuilding will be *very* difficult.

We need a Y2k Pony Express...utilizing CB/Ham and private letter mail.

Bernie Sayers///

-- Bernie Sayers (Sayers@Y2koncepts.com), August 11, 1999.

I would like to see something in our post-Y2K world which is missing from our current world: A set of values or morals which parallel those set forth in the bible. The key difference is: These morals or values need to be taught as necessary and valuable REGARDLESS of eternal damnation or dogmas or threats. Yes I know religion is a sticky subject but I think post-Y2K will be a perfect opportunity for people to realize that MURDER is wrong--not because some God has decreed so, but because it is inherently wrong as an act which does not further life and perpetuation of the species. Similarly, THEFT is wrong for those same reasons. Today, many have rejected religions without obtaining another avenue of morals or values. Therefore, we have become a society lacking in morals and values (as some say). The best reason, in my opinion, to act morally and as an upstanding citizen is to further life and perpetuation of our species. I'd like to see these lessons taught in earnest but separate from religious fraud because, today and post-Y2K people will have evolved to a point where they don't buy the fire and brimstone fairy tales. Another reason which makes this stance even more urgent is the fact that religious fanatics, although they are few, may capitalize upon any type of Y2K-related disaster and explain it away as the wrath of God. This possible scenario of a return to the superstitious medieval days places a heightened importance upon the rational, level-headed explanation of favorable values and mores in order to ensure the continuation of our species. I welcome any comments. If I sound like a flake, I apologize. I'm really not. I'm 36 years old, a married mother of three children. I just graduated from college with a degree in political science and psychology. I'm starting law school in a few weeks and, as a RGI, I'm very concerned about the future.

-- Diane (DDEsq2002@juno.com), August 11, 1999.

After giving this some thought, the only additional thing I came up with is "Justice - Punishment vs. Prevention".

Unfortunately prevention isn't working, so we will probably need to draw some hard lines for punishment after Y2K. It's a sorry state of affairs.

DJ

-- DJ (reality@check.com), August 11, 1999.

'LAWS and The LAWLESS' How to deal with the 'Law & Order' issues in a time of probable widespread anarchy. Gangs are well-organized in most major cities, and will doubtless be expanding their 'turf'.

-- Giles Kavanagh (spectrum2@earthlink.net), August 12, 1999.

Ed

First, thanks for your new effort. I was thinking of "Lexus and the Olive Tree" as I read the draft of the first chapter. In awareness it took me too long to understand the the import of our multi-linked world.

This issue will become even more important to understand after y2k as many simply believe that if America is alright then they will be alright. This is no longer valid.

So, perhaps a little on the international front. The USA is a part of the rest of the world and just how much so will become even more apparent after the rollover.

There is also a very real possibility of cyberterrorism-at least enough to mention possible problems resulting from it. Electronic security will be the biggest and hottest business.

Just some thoughts. I have been thinking about this too. Keep up the good work.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), August 12, 1999.

Ed:

Just a thought here. I'm not sure if South Africa's "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" was all that effective or accomplished all that much. But it was an interesting idea. When you have an episode where bad policy decisions are made, bad actions are taken, and bad things happen to some people as a result, then when that episode finally is terminated and becomes history, the consequences of these bad things become part of the aftermath problem. The extend to which they are or are not dealt with in a positive manner could have a huge influence on how the aftermath unfolds.

What will we be facing in the aftermath?

- The consequences of bad technical decisions by computer professionals - The consequences of bad management decisions by managers - The consequences of bad policy decisions by government officers - The consequences of lies and propaganda issued from corporations and governments with the complicity of the mass media - The consequences of neighbors behaving badly to exacerbate the problem instead of pitching in to help each other.

I don't know if a "Truth Commission" is what we need or not. But we need some way to go about setting the record straight, getting the full truth out in the open, establishing some sort of justice, and facilitating some sore of social reconciliation and healing. This is an issue which needs to be covered somewhere.

-- Stefan Stackhouse (stefans@mindspring.com), August 13, 1999.

Perhaps these issues will be addressed in the chapter on social/cultural issues -- ??

In the meantime, I keep looking for a discussion in the book on what in US (all of us, as in society) caused the Y2K problem. I do not for a minute believe that programmers should be *blamed* for Y2K but rather top management, primarily. However, even that is inadequate because in a much larger sense, those human beings are only a product of society at large.

SO: What are the societal factors that contributed to / caused Y2K?

As for my own answer, I have always maintained (that is, since I became a RGI) that Greed, Arrogance and Denial are the major contributing factors.

GREED -- the eternal frenzied quest for a better bottom line NOW, this quarter, and the future be damned. There was NEVER an opportunity, or any interest, in pursuing something that could only put a drag on the current bottom line. Of course, the final (global) outcome of that oversight could not have been predicted very easily back when time was sufficient to fix the legion problems -- but even so, the perennial insistance on performance NOW precluded that.

I often remember back to the late 1970s when computerization and robotization were controversial. Unions, of course, fought it all becaus it would mean the loss of jobs, which it did. However, look at the compuer industry now, and how many jobs were created. At any rate, defenders of computers promised us a virtual utopia -- severely shortened work weeks and greatly enhanced leisure time, propserity and abundance for all, etc. (I may be overstating the case somewhat, but that's the way I remember the discussion.) What happened to that promise? Recent statistics show we are working MORE than we ever did before. The shortest official work weeks for full-time employees you will find is 35 hours. Meanwhile, business enjoyed TREMENDOUS gains in productivity, and profits -- and while we as a nation have been enjoying relative prosperity, it's nothing like what could have been achieved had those gains in productivity been shared with workers, as was promised so long ago. How sad. We could have had a veritable utopia. We might have even been able to solve poverty, and global hunger.

ARROGANCE (Hubris) -- This undergirds everything else. It is perhaps the human condition, the wrongheaded the notion that we are somehow invincible, infallible, and/or that our technology will always win out, save us, prevent or undo catastrophe (eventually, if not instantly). It is rampant in the kinds of technologies and business thrusts which are not well-reported (except on the Internet), but which are sheer lunacy: Terminator Seed Technology; some types of cloning; genetically engineered and irradiated foods; on and on. I have an entire file I call "Why Y2K [is necessary]" because I see no other avenue by which some of this insanity could be brought to the early death it deserves. Yes, some individuals, groups and countries are successfully rebelling against genetially engineered foods and terminator seed technology, but take the whole panoply of the truly insane technological developments we endure, and as a group they simply demand something as catastrophic as a Y2K to bring them to an immediate and total end.

As another example (which leads into the denial issue), what sort of mentality does it take to create a whole industry for which the byproducts are so lethal, so toxic, that they can render whole regions sterile and uninhabitable for thousands and thousands of years, and yet for which there is no truly *safe* place on the entire planet to store them? Is THIS not arrogance in the extreme (as well as denial)?

DENIAL-- A difficult concept to fully understand. I have been fascinated to study the types, levels and intractibility of denial among DGIs, and even some GIs, some of whom are apparently in top management in corporations and in our governments (federal, state, local), and I have been fascianted to observe and learn more about how it works.

Denial is a defense mechanismm self-protection. It is a response to information that is too emotionally threatening to be safely faced. To squarely face such information (whever it is) would require an untenable response. A battered wife is unable to recognize that her husband will never stop abusing her because it would require that she leave. A family is unwilling to face the alcoholic in their midst because it would require making quite a few unattractive changes.

That denial is an emotional self-protection mechanism is the key to why DGIs are, and will remain, DGIs. You cannot convince DGIs through logic -- because the foundation of their denial is emotional, not logical. In fact, the harder you TRY to convince a DGI, it's entirely likely the more entrenched in their denial they will become BECAUSE they are protecting themselves emotionally and that MUST be sustained. If the facts become more threatening and less dismissable, the denial just gets stronger. The wonderful Lane Core, for example, can shoot impecable holes in ALL the illogical arguments from the DGIs and he likely won't make a single convert. If they must, the DGIs will simply find yet another *reason* (however illogical) to refuse to get it.

Denial is rampant in our society, and not just about Y2K. I already pointed out the nuclear power issue as one example, but you can look anywhere and find many more examples. (I could go on and on, but this is probably OT.)

Are our *leaders* evil or irresponsible or incompetent when they refuse or are unable to tell us the truth about Y2K, or are they simply in the throes of whatever type or flavor of denial it is that prevents THEM from recognizing, acknowledging and accepting the reality, and their concomitant responsibility to the people they serve?

What can we do, as a society, to foster clarity and self-honesty in all our citizens and root out denial? What can we do to minimize or eradicate greed? What can we do to eradicate the arrogance that has led us to this place of the great fall (as in "Pride goeth before the fall")?

Isn't Y2K really, then, merely symptomatic of a sick society? I mean *sick* not in the sense of perverted (LOL-- though a case could be made for that, I'm sure) but rather in the sense of ill -- and MANY cases could be made for that!

And what values or characteristics could we possibly strive to instill in ourselves and our society instead? Some random thoughts --

GREED-- Is there such a thing as *enough* and what does *enough* looks like (individually and collectively)? The value of not taking more than is necessary could be fostered. Indigenous peoples never decimated whole populations of any food, whether plant or animal.

ARROGANCE -- We have to get beyond ultra-short term thinking and acting, and beyond our belief that Nature can and ought to be controlled. The Native American practice of considering the impact of all decisions *unto the 7th generation* is an ideal we should consider, IMO, along with a genuine respect for ALL of life, whether we understand that life or not. We have to understand our interconnectedness, not just with one another, not just within a global economy with its division of labor, but with the very Earth iself and all her creatures. Being at the top of the food chain doesn't give us the right to dominate the rest of it, nor does it guarantee that we are as smart as we think we are. We have proven again and again that we are not.

DENIAL -- Unfortunately, this is a spiritual issue. It requires healing our emotional wounds so we are emotionally strong and capable enough to not only see but cope with the truth, whatever the truth or unpleasant reality may be.

Perhaps all this is beyond the scope of this book. I hope not. I think these are at least as important to address (if not more so) than how to bring the grid back up, what the programming profession will be like after Y2K or what kind of government we will have if our current one collapses.

Because the penchant for treating symptoms instead of underlying diseases is also partially what got us here (Denial).

Whatever happens when 1/1/00 rolls around, if we don't make things BETTER, including foundational issues such as these, we'll only rebuild the same thing in different garb -- same song, second verse, only worse.

Whatever happens, the opportunity to do it BETTER is to me the hidden gift of Y2K. And I'd like to see us succeed at that.

Patricia

-- Patricia (psanthuff@mindspring.com), August 13, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr near Monterey, California

What additional chapters do we need...?

Childcare and Childraising. I believe that a big part of the reason that we were able to make this big Y2K mistake and then persisted in not correcting it in time is first our method of childraising, and second our method of learning (which you're calling "Education").

Children who are raised by nanny's and then daycare and babysitters, then pre-school, then kindergarten, and then receive another 12-20 or more years of so-called "socialization" in schools are in no shape to be attempting creative or independent thought without first going through a period of decompression or unschooling.

Children need good models of independent thinking, and advisors who have their interests foremost. Babysitters and teachers cannot duplicate this function, no matter how few children they have in their charge. Adults who were not trained as children to move with the herd can trust their own judgement and summon the courage to speak out against wrong thinking. They will also be generally less likely to accept the "one right way" of doing things.

The World of Work The Next Way should allow people of all ages to be employed by multiple employers at various times of day. This way, children can become welcome in the work place as worthwhile contributors. Parents can take time to be with their children when needed. Nobody need be totally dependent on their one boss at their one job.

Health Insurance (as distinct from Health Care> Everyone should have the ability to purchase individual health insurance independent from their employment and their family. Health insurance offered by employers must be freely convertible to an individual policy without the need to remain with that employer. Family policies must be similarly convertible. Employees who are dependent upon their current employer in order to maintain insurance for an ill family member are not free to speak their minds about wrong thinking at work. Those who depend upon their spouse for insurance are not free to speak their mind at home. Those who get sick may be not long insurred if they have to stay well enough to keep employed and/or married.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), September 06, 1999.