I'm getting so sick and tired of articles and people that I talk with who can only see two extremes: just a blip, the end of the world. I was talking with my brother-in-law who is a programmer (phd) for IBM in their research department. It was obvious he had done little or no reading on y2k and based his opinions on how the world will do on what has filtered in through his company. He is a "just a blip" guy and so I began giving him facts on the y2k race. He then interjected the statement that y2k will not bring the end of the world. I had said nothing about the end of the world. All I was doing was giving him some cold hard facts with no opinion on them. I told him that I was sick and tired of people thinking you have only 2 choices with y2k. That's like saying if you live in the U.S., you must live on the east coast or west coast. There's a whole lot of middle ground there. In fact, most of y2k is middle ground, like most issues. I do happen to think that it is on the severe side of middle. I told him I do think it could change the way we live taking us back a couple of generations.

Oh well, what others think is not that important. What prevention they put into place is and the social cohesion necessary to rebuild what is destroyed by y2k.

-- James Chancellor (publicworks1@bluebonnet.net), January 04, 1999

Answers

What is interesting psycho-socially is that your brother-in-law intuitively (I would say) did grasp the "danger level" of Y2K, if only to belittle it.

"End of the world", even Infomagic style, is a projection into a void shaped by wishes/fears. It's a token, a marker, a signal, not a rational conversation-starter (using "rational" in its strictest sense).

I would wager your b-in-law (and all the other ones out there) are mainly saying, "hey, I know what's behind that door, the bogey-man, and I'm not going to look."

"Going back several generations" is going to be 'the end of the world', that is, the People Magazine world we live in, BTW. So, in a sense, your b-in-law has you nailed after all.

There is going to be a lot of nastiness next year between all the in-laws around the globe when those who have prepared make it known, as they will by necessity that, after a meal or two, the blippers are now going to have to make it largely on their own. That's not cruelty, but sad reality and not the saddest reality we're likely to see in the next few years.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 04, 1999.

Add it to our board of Y2K Dreads:

Another volatile burr for in-law troubles.

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), January 04, 1999.