Michael Jordan Analogy -- Y2K Was Never Possible 'Doomsday'

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

I would like to use an analogy involving basketball star Michael Jordan to explain why I now think Y2K was never a possible "Doomsday." As such, I believe that the person who still needs to come forth and concede that he was wrong, along with everyone else, is Peter De Jaeger. I'll explain why in a minute.

I think everyone would like to bring a little closure to Y2K. This is a good thing for humans to do, lest we end up with an ad nauseum post mortem that drags on forever like we've had with the JFK assassination. To this day, all sorts of different conspiracies are still claimed, coverups posited, etc. This is not healthy for anyone.

Y2K is not fully over. But unless we start experiencing some significant disruptions, it will be fair to declare it "over" by the end of March. That will give us several billing cycles and a full fiscal quarter for serious problems to develop. I am not "hoping for problems" in the meantime, just saying that if no significant disruptions come by March then they aren't coming.

Just so you know my biases, I was a middle-of-the-roader, tending toward the optimistic side. My personal preparations were about a month of supplies (I figured ten times the government estimate would be a safe bet.) This really amounted to nothing more than a very full pantry and dozens of old 2-liter coke bottles filled with water, plus medications for elderly relatives. I never thought I would have to use the supplies, but I played it safe to that degree. I never expected doom. I expected one or two SERIOUS disruptions somewhere in North America, and three or four times that many in less prepared countries. I was wrong, along with just about everyone else.

As we all know . . . . none came. Anywhere. ZERO.

That brings me to the Michael Jordan analogy. It was always said of Jordan that, "You can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him." No matter how good your coaching or defensive schemes, no matter if you double- or triple-teamed him, whatever, Michael was going to get his 30 points. That's all there was to it. To hold him to zero points, or even to hold him to the NBA average of, say, ten or twelve points, was simply impossible, no matter what you did. Your only hope was to limit him to his normal point total, plus at least a few spectacular plays during the game -- a breakaway slam or two, a handful of steals, some great defensive rejections, a few stunning drives. You just wanted to avoid Doomsday: having him light you up for 55 or so. But to think you could stop him totally was to be living in a dreamworld.

And yet, this is exactly what De Jaeger, Koskinen, et al would have us believe. Y2K was supposed to be a massive, pervasive, ubiquitous, insidious problem that could crush you in any number of ways. It could not be dealt with normally -- i.e., this was the Michael Jordan of computer problems. Special plans had to be made to defend against it. The things you normally did wouldn't be good enough, they would mean "Doomsday."

We are being asked to believe that those in charge stopped Jordan totally.

This is an insult to the reader's intelligence. The only reasonable conclusion is that it was never Jordan in the first place.

And it's time for De Jaeger to admit as much. Gary North, Ed Yourdon, Ed Yardeni, et al, have conceded they were wrong. It's time for De Jaeger to do the same. The results are in. If Y2K ever had even the potential to be a "Doomsday" problem, there is no way that everything, everywhere, was fixed such that there was NOT ONE serious problem. Since De Jaeger was always very quick to point out when he thought other people's opinions were "foolish" or even "dangerous," and since he was always willing to accept kudos and remuneration for being the foremost expert on the problem, it's only fair that his feet be held to the fire at least as much, if not more, than everyone else. He was in large part responsible for the massive spending that went on. And those who did little or nothing faired just as well as the massive spenders.

This is not to say that De Jaeger was a money-grubber trying to hype up y2k for his own benefit. Just that he was honestly wrong. By a vast, vast margin. He helped lead everyone to believe that we had to prepare to defend against Michael Jordan when y2k was always the equivalent of an average NBA player, and only called for a regular defense. It was a computer problem like many others that are dealt with all the time.

If you put together a massive effort to stop an average NBA player from scoring, that's something that can indeed be accomplished. But Michael Jordan? No way.

One might say, "Yes, but De Jaeger only said that it would be doomsday if the problem wasn't dealt with." True enough, I suppose, but the odds of people not dealing with it were zero.

Otherwise, I could create another crisis right now and then claim victory when nothing happens. I could say that on January 24, 2000, if people do not fill up their vehicles with gas when their tanks get to empty, we could have doomsday. Commerce would cease. Planes wouldn't fly, etc. The economy would crumble. All very true.

But what are the odds of that happening? Absolutely zero. People don't just ignore problems. If you start running out of gas, you fill up the tank. Again, the only reason I didn't buy this argument with y2k is because we were told this was not an average problem with average solutions. This was Michael Jordan. An average defense might mean doomsday. Y2K would take years of work, massive amounts of money, it was not something that could be dealt with as you found out about it. For a host of reasons, it was far worse than anything you'd experienced before.

This turned out not to be the case.

De Jaeger claimed we "broke the back" of y2k. Well, come a few days before the fateful "running out of gas" day, I could simply claim that enough people are now taking action that it no longer appears it will be a serious problem.

So let's put an end to Y2K. It is intellectually dishonest to claim that we fixed everything. Either significant problems are still coming, or y2k was just an ordinary problem with ordinary solutions. Come the end of March, if nothing of y2k significance has happened, Peter de Jaeger should say something to the effect that even though he had the best of intentions, the results evince that his initial evaluation of y2k vastly overestimated the seriousness of the problem. Because if y2k ever could have been "Doomsday," it simply would not have been possible to eliminate ALL serious problems.

We didn't muddle through, we breezed through. Lots of people can be wrong about the same thing. It's time for De Jaeger to admit he was wrong too, by a long shot. Everybody makes errors.

But nobody stops Michael Jordan.

-- Xng Ng (xngng@go.com), January 08, 2000

Answers

Nice post.

-- PA Engineer (PA Engineer@longtimelurker.com), January 08, 2000.

A curveball from a AA minor league pitcher stopped Jordan almost every time.

Apologies should also be forthcoming from Senator Bennett, amongst others. He scared me more than de Jager ever did.

-- wannabe (like@mike.unc), January 08, 2000.


...and from Koskinen, too. He's scaring me now by telling me its still not over. And don't forget those dorks at the US Navy War College, who must be rolling in the aisles right now because their report was really just a midshipman-type prank, and everybody took it so seriously.

Now that I come to think of it, there were one heck of a lot of people and organizations who must have been in on setting up this li'l farce, and they did it - they persuaded me that Y2K's a real problem, and they did it so well that I'm still persuaded!

Xng Ng - you're gonna need more than Michael Jackson to sell this theory. The only people who could really do the job for you are....Koskinen and de Jager. But they've already booked their concert schedules for this season...

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 08, 2000.


I wanna be like Mike.

-- jk (willit@ever.end), January 08, 2000.

Keep in mind that most companies will release their financial results in April. If they are having serious computer problems which affect their operations or sales, they will have to disclose them in their quarterly financial reports. Therefore, we should know if Y2K is causing serious problems by the end of April.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), January 08, 2000.


You're right Dave. I should have said end of April.

-- Xng Ng (xngng@go.com), January 08, 2000.

Well put. Way too much self-congratulation going on. Thinking we could have solved ALL problems, if they really were so serious, is nonsense.

-- Sigmund Newsome (signews@hotmail.com), January 08, 2000.

I'd almost have to agree. What I find most annoying is the after-the- fact justifications we're getting now. One can sense that the authorities and consultants don't even believe the "we solved everything" line themselves. Now it's, "It was good training and we're much more in tune with how our IT infrastructure works. It was very valuable." Etc., etc. I can't stand when people do this.

The simple fact is, if it was all under false pretenses, then in any other circumstance we would be castigating those who did it. It's like if the police mistakenly inform you that your daughter has been kidnapped but then upon finding out they were wrong they try and say, "Yes, but look, it brought your family closer together. You learned how much you love one another. You should be thanking us."

Rubbish.

-- Marvin Weintraub (mweintraub@netaddress.com), January 08, 2000.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ