Y2K
Countries are on the alert, banks are fearful of financial chaos, hospitals are preparing essential goods. Government officials claim they are in control while they prepare for the worst scenarios. Hundreds of millions of people are worried. What is causing the global world crises? What threat, if any, is out there?
It is a new man-made bug. It is worse than any airborne bug, as it goes everywhere. It is called the Y2K Bug. The bug causes computer confusion where data relating to years will go haywire. Computer scientists have created the most sophisticated programs and machinery to help the world and now the opposite has taken place. At midnight on December 31, 1999, computers will not be able to compute and we may enter a world in collision. The new millennium may become a time of total confusion. It is feared that ATMs, airlines, grocery stores, schools and hospitals will be out of commission. Computers will post off-line messages and the country will cease to function correctly. Communications between computers will be haphazard, as some will be up to date while others not. Who do we blame and what do we do?
Our infatuation with computers has led us to describe computers and computer programs in human terms. When the computer is down it is sick; we say it has a virus. When the screen freezes we say it has some kind of bug. It almost sounds like we need an endocrinologist and not a computer programmer.
Computers were created to assist us with our daily living; our lives were to be made easier with computers. Banking, billing, buying, and paying are performed by computers. Programs are designed to make life less stressful. But that is not happening. We have become so enslaved to the computer that we now fear the computer's confusion. It seems we have created a monster situation.
"May you live in interesting times." (Chinese proverb).
Our technology provides millions of E-mails; we can fax, beep and call each other as never before. We even have machines that can record actions, thoughts and body fluids in space. In the early 50s, comics portrayed Detective Dick Tracy wearing a two-way walky talky wristwatch. What was a technical dream is now real. Having information at the palm of your hand has been interpreted to mean to have a palm computer handy. You can talk to a machine and it will type your message.
Yes we have come a long way in technology. We are the most technically connected people and at the same time we are the most disconnected generation. We are in touch with everybody everywhere, anytime. But unfortunately we are not in touch with ourselves. I think we are not taking responsibility for our lives.
For example.
Recently $125 million was spent on a space mission to Mars. A vehicle called the Climate Orbiter traveled over 416 million miles for a closer observation of Mars. During the nine and a half month journey instructions for the space vehicle called for corrections guided by thrusters. The Climate Orbiter never reached its goal. It has been reported that Lockheed Martin provided scientific data, submitted information called acceleration data in English units instead of metric units. The Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) uses metric units. The confusion between the two companies led the thruster to incorrectly veer the vehicle close to Mars causing it to disappear.
Think for a moment how the finest scientific minds from JPL and Lockheed Martin could not communicate on a simple scientific measurement.
John Logsdon, Director of George Washington Space Policy Institute was on target when he heard of the Mars - mishap, saying "That is so dumb." However, Carl Pilcher, Science Director for Solar System Exploration, thought differently. He said, "This was not a failure of Lockheed Martin it was a systematic failure to realize and correct an error that should have been caught." What in the world was he talking about? Why can't he just take responsibility. The excuse given of human error that should have been corrected by machines is totally reprehensible.
There's a story in Jewish folklore of an astrologer who foretold a calamity that would affect his kingdom. All the crops would be tainted with a dangerous bug. It would poison the minds of people causing them to lose their rationality. When the astrologer told the king of this ominous news, the king said, "Since you are the harbinger of this news, you'll have to put away one year's quantity of untainted crop to sustain yourself. During the year you will run around whispering the words, 'Remember, there was a time when we were all sane.'
It seems that our generation has eaten from the tainted crop. The tainted crop has created a behavior for making excuses for anything by pointing to computers, blaming machines for our failures and unhappiness, forgetting that we are the ones that created them in the first place. Irrationality is the new form of thinking, sadly our minds are poisoned.
Very few have not eaten from this bewitching crop and they now have the sad mission of whispering the words, "Remember, there was a time when we were all sane," reminding us of the original plans where computers were to help us become more productive and give us a better quality of living.
Personally, I am not worried about the Y2K bug. I am more concerned with people taking responsibility for their actions. We need to de-bug our brains by providing a program of being responsible for our thoughts, deed, and actions. The great Maimonides had it correct when he stated that Man is given free will to choose the proper path of life and is responsible, at all times, for his actions.