Lately we have been seeing alot of problems that have been attributed to Y2K while the news sources state that they are NOT Y2K related.

What is interesting to me is that after being on the TB forums for several years, the level of failures reported in the media is increasing - even beyond the level of failures and problems that were noted by the forum participants just over the last few months.

Whether or not these problems are really Y2K related is not the point. We seem to be experiencing a broad array of failures across the face of our technological infrastructure. In other words maybe we are beginning to see an iceberg reveal itself of which Y2K was just the tip.

It doesn't matter to me whether you are a doomer, polly or somewhere in the middle, I believe it is important that we all keep our eyes open regarding the problems that are appearing.

p.s. I am not prep retailer and I do not have a book I am trying to sell either.

-- ExCop (yinadral@hotmail.com), January 06, 2000

Answers

ditto. and thanks for the disclaimer.

-- drb hays (bestrong@cmc.net), January 06, 2000.

While technology is always "breaking" and "almost working", the final score on Y2K (this summer) will give us an advance indicator on how resilient our technologies really are.

Even if we receive a positive answer, the enormous confusion over PROSPECTIVE Y2K impacts tells us how little we understand technology "in the large" (across our worldwide environment).

That is, we don't know whether the "web" of technologies is more robust than we think or more fragile than we fear - or, most likely, somewhere between those poles.

We also don't know when or whether our tinkering with magic will come back to bite us (think: genetic engineering, but there are a surprising number of other domains where we are playing innocently with "fire").

Whether we get burned or not, one thing is unquestionable: the number of human beings who can sustain themselves even modestly well with their own skills and do it with their neighbors in their own locality is becoming vanishingly small. Calling attention to that by our own thought and actions is certainly germane in 2000.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 06, 2000.

ExCop, This is a good post. I was just going to bring up the point that it seems to me that we have been having more failures (whether y2k related or not) in the past couple of days than ever before. I waited for the rollover and there were not many major problems. But it seems that now, I am reading about all kinds of glitches.

I heard De Jager the other day on cnbc and he said that we may have more problems at the end of this week. (Paraphrase). He said that when the totals of purchases and such start rolling in for the first week of the new year and beyond, then that will be the y2k test...

Imagine.... De Jager saying that.....

-- Teresa (ima@believer.com), January 06, 2000.

Well, I'm wondering if it's the fact that we are focused on Y2k and possible failures after the non-event rollover, that perhaps more people are reporting things that before went relativly un-noticed. I'm not sayng that we aren't having glitches...just that everyone is 'seeing' nore glitches that before all they did was reboot the computer or hit CTRL/ALT/Del.....?

-- Satanta (EventHoriz@n.com), January 06, 2000.

Yes I thought that maybe the failures we were seeing were always there but because we are so focused on Y2K we were just seeing them.

But after re-reading some of the reports of failures it occured to me that the TB2000 group always reported any failures they came across during the previous year or so and we never had this many failures reported during that time frame.

-- ExCop (yinadral@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000.