Y2K: As anti-climatic as the debate?

THE PANEL ON THE Y2K issue at the NCEW Denver conference didn't generate the fireworks that were expected.

Predictions vary widely as to what will happen to computer systems when they attempt to cope, in data processing terms, with the beginning of a new century. The panelists, selected for their varying views as to the severity of the problem, turned out to be more in accord than the audience bargained for. Although there were disagreements on a number of aspects of the Y2K issue, there was agreement on the basic issue -- that the Y2K bug would not cause any serious problems, at least not in the United States.

Thus, Jim Hickman, author of Your Y2K Personal Protection Plan, concurred with the two other panelists that the majority of U.S. residents don't have much to worry about on next New Year's Day. Although he writes in his book that the Y2K error "threatens to collapse the very fabric upon which our global society rests," he took a different approach on the panel.

"The Y2K problem is no longer a threat to the entire globe," Hickman said. "A lot has been done in the past year to tackle the issue."

Later, when fellow panelist Sherman Smith alleged that Hickman was spreading paranoia through his book, Hickman modified his position.

"The United States will generally be OK. There'll be some serious disruptions but they will not last too long," Hickman said. "But the rest of the world will have problems... which will wash up on our shores."

Hickman warned that the risk of accidental nuclear war had returned with Y2K. This assertion was promptly challenged by Smith, who contended that government officials and experts say that no computer system can fire missiles by itself, since the launching of missiles requires the entering of multiple commands and codes.

Hickman argued that the Y2K bug may actually be beneficial, since the process of fixing it had led to the creation of crisis management centers around the world, which will be able to react to other threats in the next millennium.

Smith, the author of Lie-2K: Why the Alleged End-of-the-World Year-2000 Computer Crisis is Really Just a Hoax and an investment adviser, had a different analysis to present.

"If you're headed to the basement to escape a ball of fire, you're going to miss a ship to the Bahamas and a great vacation," Smith opined.

Smith dismissed the Y2K scare as one more in a line of doomsday panic scenarios. Similar forecasts were made in 1990 and 1995 "which would make the hair at the end of Freddy Krueger's neck stand," he commented.

To counter the earlier panics, Smith said, he wrote an anti-doomsday book (Exploding the Doomsday Money Myths) because many of his clients were cashing out their investments. When he heard about the Y2K affair, he said, he headed to the bookstore and found the same people who wrote the earlier doomsday books were now writing Y2K books. Since he couldn't find a single book demolishing the argument, Smith decided to write Lie-2K.

Richard Varns, Y2K compliance coordinator for the city of Boulder, Colo., staked a position somewhere between Hickman's and Smith's and lent an air of levity to the proceedings with his sense of humor.

"Y2K is a Rorschach Test for how each and everyone of us responds to uncertainty," Varns said. "So it's either a bunch of pancakes or a pile of dead bunnies. If you want guarantees in life, you'll go berserk. If you can live with uncertainty, you'll be OK."

Varns preferred to stay in the middle of the road.

"As someone who works in the trenches, I don't think it's either hoax or horror," Varns said. "It's a real issue, though. But it's been substantially and responsibly addressed."

Varns urged editorial writers to write responsibly about the issue, saying that if enough people think there will be staple shortages at the turn of year and stockpile during December, the fears will become self-fulfilling.

The panelists agreed that the discussion on the issue could itself last another millennium. Whatever audience members did or did not take away from the discussion, they did get two books for free. Both Your Y2K Personal Protection Plan and Lie-2K were available at no charge to anyone who attended the panel.

NCEW member Amitabh Pal is the editor of The Progressive Media Project in Madison, Wis. His e-mail address is [e-mail]