Y2K Bug and the End of the World Session Notes

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Y2K Bug and the End of the World

What Is The Problem and How Is It Fixed?
What Is The Threat?
Crisis and Catharsis: Why So Much Fear Around Y2K
What Is The Apocalypsis and The Millenium?
What Is The Real Threat?

What Is The Problem and How Is It Fixed?
- Only last two digits of a year, until recently, were stored.
  1950 is stored as 50
  1999 is stored as 99
  2000 is stored as 00
  2001 is stored as 01
- Whereas 1999 is before (less than) 2000, 99 is after (greater than) 00
- any logic dependent on date sequencing has the potential to err
- Your mortagage payment is due 1/1/2000.
  You send it in on 12/15/1999
  Payment must be received before due date; i.e., receipt date < due date and indeed 1999 < 2000
  If 2000 is stored as 00 and 1999 is stored as 99, then 99 > 00 and payment likely not to be credit.
- This problem is pervasive in banking, transport, telecommunications, retail, etc. -- any system that processes date sequences.
- Many old programs exist with this problem in the range of billions of lines of code.
- How are these programs repaired? See IBM's site for example
  1. Expansion
    - In each program, expand year to CYY or YYYY, where C is a century indicator (0 = 19; 1 = 20; 2 = 21)
    - Requires program and database and layout changes
  2. Windowing
    - Establish a 100 window.
    - Century of a two digit year is determined by where it lies in window
    - Assume all dates fall in 1 Jan 1954 to 31 Dec 2053.
      If YY > 53, assume 19YY
      If YY < 54, assume 20YY
    - Requires only program changes
  3. Encoding
    - Encode 4 digit year into 2 digits
    - Hexadecimal (1900s and 2000s have same century digit (07)), or
      unsigned packed decimal
    - Program and database changes
    - Conversion needed on output
What Is The Threat?
- Gartner Group has done a very credible job of describing Year 2000 Readiness
- The Red Cross has a balanced set of suggestions.
- Y2K bug may result in conditions not unlike a severe storm:
  - temporary disruptions
  - localized disruptions
  - electrical power may be unavailable
  - manufacturing and production may be disrupted
  - traffic signals may be disrupted
  - credit cards/ATM may not process
  - telephones may be out
- Reasonable things to do:
  1. check electronic equipment for Y2K compliance
  2. stock disaster supplies, such as food, water, medicine
  3. have extra cash
  4. have full tank of gas
  5. prepare an alternative cooking plan
  6. have extra blankets, coats, etc for warmth
  7. have flashlights
  8. check smoke alarms
- Head for the hills!: Some expect a more apocalypic result:
  - There will be catastrophic failure of:
    1. electricity
    2. water
    3. telephones
    4. food supplies
    5. fuel supplies
  - No one is Y2K compliant (which isn't true)
  - Run on banks
  - No doctors
  - No security
  - Expect rioting and looting
  - Therefore people need to:
    1. Stockpile, indefinitely
    2. Be trained on home security: don't be an easy target
    3. What to do when there is no doctor: home remedies
    4. Organize neighbors and family for protection
    5. Know how to educate children when schools are closed: home schooling
- Don't panic!
  - Can become a self-fulfilling prophecy
  - Companies advertizing that they are Y2K compliant to offset panic
  - Some "unstable" countries may experience additional panic
  - Grocery companies developing plans to deal with stockpiling
Crisis and Catharsis: Why So Much Fear Around Y2K
- s. Crisis & Catharis: The Power of the Apocalypse; Adela Yarbro Collins; 1984; The Westminster Press; Philadelphia.
- Consider the excitement around such media works as:
  
  Ammeggidon
  Deep Impact
  Worlds In Collision
  - Its exciting!
  - Its escapist
  - Its satisfying
- These works set up a crisis and present a resolution (catharisis)
- Collins argues the same thing occurs in the Apocalypse
- Crisis in the Apocalypse:
  clash between the Johannine Christians' expectations and their social reality
  1. Conflict with Jews
  2. Mutual antipathy toward neighboring gentiles
  3. Conflict over wealth
  4. Precarious relations with Rome
- Catharsis in the Apocalypse:
  to deal constructively with the aggressive feelings aroused by the perceived crisis
  1. explaining and symbolizing the crisis
  2. creation of a new sacred cosmos
  3. transferring aggression to another subject: God and the Lamb
  4. transposing agression from present to future
  5. transforming agression into Christian disciple
- this might have worked for first century Christians, but twenty first century Christians must re-understand the crisis and catharsis
- Similarly American Chrisitans feel in crisis today:
  1. Less socio-political; more spiritual
  2. More similar to first century pagan Romans, than first century Christians
  3. free floating anxiety and dissatifaction
  4. life is good; so why don't I feel good
  5. something must be wrong? but what?
  6. we are "unspiritual" (even conservation Christians resort to mechanical, objective means, such as bible reading and the Law)
  7. so if crisis is spiritual we do not articulate it
- The modern spiritual crisis:
  1. faith in things, not God
  2. alienated from creation and God
  3. fragmentation, rather than whole
  4. stress & pressure
  5. emprison by mamon
- And seek a catharsis:
  1. conspiracy theories
  2. millenialism and apocalypism
  3. workaholism
  4. survivalism
  5. me-ism
  6. New Agism
  7. Y2Kism
What Is The Apocalypsis and The Millenium?
- s. Christian History; Issue 61 (Vol. XVIII, No. 1); The End., A history of the Second Coming.
  - see chart on pp 26-27
- historic premillenialism
  1. Age of Israel
  2. First Coming of Christ
  3. Church Age, ending in Tribulation
  4. Second Coming of Christ, including Rapture
  5. Millennium
  6. final Judgment
  7. new heaven and earth
- amillenialism:
  current age is the millennium;
  mainline tradition
  1. Age of Israel
  2. First Coming of Christ
  3. Church Age and Millennium
  4. Second Coming of Christ (no Rapture) and final Judgment
  5. new heaven and earth
- dispensationalism:
  the view of many modern fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals.
  1. Age of Israel
  2. First Coming of Christ
  3. (Church Age)
    1. Rapture (key)
    2. 7-Year Tribulation
  4. Second Coming of Christ
  5. Millennium
  6. final Judgment
  7. new heaven and earth
- postmillenialism:
  most nineteenth-century evangelicals and some Reformed people today
  1. Age of Israel
  2. First Coming of Christ
  3. Church Age, gradually convert and reform society into a blessed state (the Millennium)
  4. Second Coming of Christ, including Rapture
  5. final Judgment
  6. new heaven and earth
What Is The Real Threat? What Is Really Happening?
- Pervasiveness & Our Dependence on Technology
  - Is our dependence on technology excessive?
  - Is our dependence simply part of our continuing evolution and part of our co-creation with God?
  - What are our responsibilities vis-a-vis the application of technology?
  - What are our backup plans for failed technology? Faith? Survivalism?
- Bifurcation of society
  - The ability to use technology is becoming critical to functioning in our society.
    1. electronic commerce
    2. VoIP
    3. knowledge
  - Technological haves and technological have-nots
  - What are our Christian responsibility to the have-nots?
  - What may be the result if we do nothing?
  - What might (is) society do (doing) to resolve this?