"Getting to, Getting Through, and Getting Past the year 2000 Problem"

"Bruce Webster is chief Technical Officer for Object Systems Group in Irving Texas and co-founder and co-chair of the Washington D.C. Year 2000 Group. He has testified several times before the U.S. Congress on the Year 2000 problem."

I bought this book yesterday, actually as an impulse purchase. It was near the register at Barnes and Noble. A $20 whim. The cover is a picture of an ostrich with it's head in the sand and a nuclear mushroom cloud badly photoshopped into the background.

Anyway, it weighs in at over 500 pages and seems to cover just about everything. I haven't read the whole thing and I won't, but here are a few snippets:

From the Introduction:

"There is a common logical fallacy, called the fallacy of false dilemnas. In its most common form, someone presents a false choice between two alternatives without acknowledging or allowing that there might be any number of other alternatives outside of the two given. For example, someone might claim that you face two choices - get a college education or flip burgers for the rest of your life - ignoring a wide variety of other paths through life. A second, even more common one is the strawman fallacy, so-called because it consists of presenting a weak or implausible ("strawman") version of an arguement and then demolishing it.

"Unfortunately, these two have been combined in much of what has passed for reporting and pronouncements on the Year 2000(or Y2K) technology issue. Typically, an article or report presents two alternatives: the end of the world as we know it . . . or no big deal at all, an non-event with most things fixed . . .

" . . . The plausible consequenses of the Y2k Problem encompass far more than these two alternatives. Indeed, as you'll see later in this book, I would argue that the likely consequences include neither; it will not be the collapse of civilization, but neither will it be a stroll in the park. Service and supply disruptions, if they happen, will tend to be short-lived, but the economic consequenses will last longer."

He does a broad sweep of explaining what the problem is, how it developed, how widesread it is, solutions, consequences, roadblocks, myths, facts and opinions, etc.

He talks about how the individual should approach thinking about it, prioritizing and preparing for it. He goes into community and national priorities.

He presents Level 1-10 scenarios and rates their probability.

"Scenario Level 4: It's The Economy, Stupid" rates for him as the highest probability at 25%.

Then he presents his Testimony before Congress and two surveys of WDCY2K. This is the stuff that I'll probably be most interested in, when I get a chance.

Anyway, it seems like a pretty good book, maybe something that newbies and DGI/DWGI can use for a better understanding of the problem. I personally liked Ed Yourdon's presentation and writing style better (and I'm not just saying this because this is his site), though I haven't seen the latest version yet. Though I'm much more of a pessimist (Level 8 according to his scenarios - probability 3 percent) I'd say Bruce's book is probably a good addition to a well rounded Y2K library.

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), February 07, 1999

Answers

BTW, I forgot to mention that I also bought George Soros' book " The Crisis of Global Capitalism." I'll do a quick book report on this one, when I'm finished with it...

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), February 07, 1999.

P Shannon, Good post. Good book!

-- Watchful (seethesea@msn.com), February 07, 1999.