SCENARIOS FACING YEAR 2000
The Year 2000 will not arrive
in a vacuum. Nations will
continue to pursue their own
interests. Companies will
compete. Decision-makers
will act. Stockholders will sell
and buy. Human quotidian
affairs will ebb and flow
according to the rhythm of biology,
institution, and
contingency.
Sailing, I could never tell
which waves would break over my
small vessel, no matter how intently
I looked to windward.
A really big one might pass under
the keel smoothly. Or a
little one might hit with a slap,
just as the bow dipped,
to toss a bucket of cold brine
at the cockpit. It was
impossible to predict.
Nevertheless, when I saw a big one
coming I kept my eye on it.
The Year 2000 is a tsunami.
Now a barely detectable
displacement in the deep infrastructure
of the developed
world, it is racing towards shore
where it will . . . what?
Can we predict how the slope
of each shore it meets will
amplify or damp its effect?
Will the tide of human affairs
be out, so its energy is spent
harmlessly over a mile of
fertile mudflat?
Or will the tide be in, so it builds and
breaks with destructive force
on humankind's central
business district?
Commentator Mitch Ratcliffe
recently went "out on a limb"
to say what might happen if the
US Government prosecutes
its anti-trust case against Microsoft.
He predicts that
the growth of the Information
Technology sector of the
economy could suffer a "40
percent to 50 percent slowing"
and the Bull Market would collapse
(http://www.ratcliffe.com/html/DK).
Mitch is an astute
observer, so let us assume that
there is a non-zero chance
that such events could evolve.
In late 1998 and early 1999
they would coincide with the
first pulse of Year 2000
phenomena.
Commentator Doug Carmichael,
observes how Asian capital is
finding safe haven in United
States stock markets these
days (http://www.tmn.com/~doug/y2kproblem.htm).
He
observes that the rest of the
world is even less prepared
than the United States for the
Year 2000. And he
extrapolates a possibility that
US markets will look good
in a Y2K induced technological
meltdown, relative to the
rest of the world, and that this
might amplify the safe
haven phenomenon. He speculates
on the possibility of a
20,000 point Dow. Sounds
good to me! But as US markets
advance zero-sum fashion, will
the losers, the hurting
formerly prosperous nations,
witness US success and suffer
in silence?
Surprise! India has
The Bomb. Surprise! Jakarta totters.
That's just this week.
What other surprises await?
In the absence of predictability,
still it is possible to
isolate robust dimensions of
uncertainty, and construct
scenarios around them.
For the Year 2000 Problem, there
seem to be two that are key:
The degree of interlinking of
technology failures, and the
degree of social coherence in
the face of the millennium.
Let us examine each of these
dimensions individually.
Along the interlinking dimension,
technological failures
could manifest as relatively
isolated events, or they could
be interlinked, with one event
causing or amplifying
another. Along the social
coherence dimension, we could
imagine that either society coheres
and institutions
survive, or that institutions
fail and "public order" is
replaced by less coherent social
forms. Now, for the
purposes of this exercise, let
us assume that these two
dimensions are orthogonal, and
that they define the
following space:
ISOLATED
TECHNOLOGICAL
FAILURES
|
|
|
|
|
SOCIAL ______________________________________
SOCIAL
COHERENCE
|
INCOHERENCE
|
|
|
|
STRONGLY
INTERLINKED
TECHNOLOGICAL
FAILURES
And if we were to name the
four resulting quadrants, we
might name them as follows:
ISOLATED
TECHNOLOGICAL
FAILURES
|
|
Business as Usual |
Whiff of Smoke
|
|
SOCIAL ______________________________________
SOCIAL
COHERENCE
|
INCOHERENCE
|
Human Spirit |
Apocalypse 2000
|
|
STRONGLY
INTERLINKED
TECHNOLOGICAL
FAILURES
Constructing four scenarios,
one for each quadrant, we find
two very familiar sounding scenarios
(Business as Usual,
and Apocalypse 2000), and two
somewhat surprising ones
(Whiff of Smoke, and Human Spirit).
Let's explore each of
these briefly:
#1 Business as Usual
Non-interlinked Technological
Failures, Social Coherence:
This is the default scenario,
the one that people think of
as they joke, "You won't
catch me on an airplane on New
Years Eve!" It doesn't
require that anybody do anything
new or suffer any consequences.
In this future the effects
of technological failures will
be spotty, where one failure
will not cause others. People
will react with a "Ho-hum,
the air conditioner's on the
blink again," attitude.
They'll say, "Oh well, the
bank is unexpectedly shut for a
few days, I guess I will have
to use my credit card."
People will devise work-arounds
for the problems that do
occur, and there will be little
urgency to the situation.
There may well be measurable
lasting effects, but, for the
most part, day-to-day life will
change little.
#2: Apocalypse 2000
Strongly Interlinked Technological
Failures, Social
Breakdown: This scenario
is the familiar, catastrophic,
total breakdown story.
In this future, there are many
failing links in the meshwork
of value chains that forms
the just-in-time economy.
Groceries and gasoline become
scarce, transportation of goods
and people becomes almost
impossible, financial systems
stop working, markets crash.
The government can't collect
taxes, deliver the mail, or
defend the coasts. The health
care system collapses. Cities
fall into ruin, suburbs become
battlegrounds. Organizations
that do not now rely upon sophisticated
interconnected
systems - gangs, third world
countries, etc. - will be at a
competitive advantage.
Everyday life becomes a nightmare.
#3: Whiff of Smoke
Non-interlinked Technological
Failures, Failure of Social
Systems: This scenario
takes its name from, "Yelling
'fire' in a crowded theater."
A "whiff of smoke," (i.e., an
occasional technological failure)
could fuel a millenial
social climate, one that might
already be stressed by other
bad news, to trigger institutional
collapse or mob
behavior. For example,
a one-day shutdown of a single bank
might cause many people to withdraw
money from many banks
at once. Or a temporary
gas shortage will trigger gas
lines and resulting shortages.
Such systems failures are
not directly date-glitch related.
Nevertheless, systems
problems with social/behavioral
causes could trigger even
more "irrational" behavior.
Everyday life would be
disrupted, institutions may totter,
but most of the major
systems, like food delivery and
healthcare, are likely
to shake, but survive.
#4: Human Spirit:
Interlinked Technological Failures,
Social Coherence: In
this scenario, despite major
cascading technological failures,
surprisingly, humanity will find
common purpose. In
England, some remember this as
"going on a war footing."
People will gain an understanding
that win-win behavior is
required, that they need to cooperate,
that daily life must
change -- for the common good.
These changes might take the
form of community cooperative
action, of rationing, or stay
at home days, or one-day-a-week
banking. Perhaps
volunteers (school children,
the retired, the unemployed)
will form "pencil and paper
brigades" to take over critical
functions while computer problems
are fixed. And it will be
amazing to see how fast diverse,
unlikely groups can learn
COBOL. Everyday life will
change, but in many ways it
could change for the better as
people rediscover
neighborhoods, the power of working
together, and their
ability to make a difference.
The Possibility of Learning
Everyday life changes dramatically
in all but one of the
above scenarios. Lesson
#1 is, "Be Prepared for Change."
History forgets tragedy, and
embraces emblematic icons.
The Civil War ended the institution
of US Slavery, World War
Two defeated Hitler. Even the
Holocaust, horrible as it
was, is today an emblem of a
people's will to survive. Few
Western people realize that the
British killed tens of
millions of Chinese people in
a fight for their "right" to sell
Opium, fewer still know of the
flu epidemic of 1918, which
also killed tens of millions
- these events did not have a
readily packaged lesson.
No matter how bad the effects
of the Year 2000 Problem are,
the world will not long remember
- unless the changes
that we almost certainly must
face embody a powerful,
positive lesson. The only
one of the scenarios above that
does this is Human Spirit.
Human Spirit gains value for
an additional reason.
If the technological failures
that will surely
come are strongly interlinked,
if the falling dominos bring
down others, if the effects of
infrastructure failures
cause failures in higher-order
systems, or vice versa, it
defines a way to break out of
the cycle - to drive, rather
than to be driven. It is
a positive plan for what
otherwise could become a grave
situation.
The Human Spirit scenario,
as drawn above, clearly is not
the only constructive response
to the situations we could
be facing. But the time
for denial is past, and the time
for planning, for engaging discussion
of the alternatives
and their consequences, has arrived.
When the tsunami siren sounds,
we need not act. But for
those of us who are neither deaf
nor defiant,
it is prudent to heed its call
and seek high ground,
even if there is a chance that
tomorrow will be business
as usual.
David I
-------
SMART Remark: "If
you want to get the signature of techno-
utopians and Luddites on the
same sheet of paper, just
write across the top, "Technology
can have unintended
consequences". They'll
rush to sign. . . . We may, then
-- in our current state of awareness
-- be unable to
predict the consequences of a
particular technology. But
that does not mean we bear no
responsibility for the
consequences, or even that, at
some level, we do not intend
them." Stephen L.
Talbott in NetFuture #71, May 14, 1998.
(http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/)
-------
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David S. Isenberg
isen@isen.com
d/b/a isen.com
http://www.isen.com/
18 South Wickom Drive
888-isen-com (anytime)
Westfield NJ 07090 USA
908-875-0772 (direct line)
908-654-0772 (home)
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-- Technology
Analysis and Strategy --
Rethinking the value of networks
in an era of abundant infrastructure.
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Date last modified: 27 May 1998