dacs.doc electric

 

Digital quirks and quantum singularities

Counting down to the Year 2000

By Allan Ostergren

 

AMERICANS LOVE COUNTDOWNS. Whether it's the 10-9-8 . . . before a shuttle launch, the number of shopping days before Christmas, or the fleeting seconds before a star ship plunges into a black hole, there's always an excitement and nervous anticipation that stirs our blood as we prepare for expected events and unexpected outcomes. And in a culture accustomed to the Hollywood ending, countdowns can be slowed or reversed, and even the most dire consequences can somehow be avoided. Once inside the black hole, for example, that starship (captained by Maximilian Schell in the movie Black Hole), simply passed through to the other side and into another galaxy.

Viewed in this perspective, it is perhaps more understandable that American veins are unstirred by the countdown to Year 2000.

Of course, there's no shortage of staged Y2K events designed to rattle our complacency. DACS Y2K spokesman Ed Heere recently participated in several official info opportunities, flanked by distinguished panels of experts that included representatives from the State of Connecticut, the City of Danbury, Yankee Gas, SNET, and Northeast Utilities. In each case, the panel outnumbered the audience. Similarly, two carefully prepared DACS Y2K conferences in the past year have been underattended--and underwhelming in their impact.

Perhaps we've all simply become Y2K weary. After all, it's been at least two years since the countdown for 2,000 began and doomsday warning flags were raised. That's longer than most attention spans and on a par with such other flung-out forgettable phenomena as the Microsoft antitrust case, the end of the world, or Hillary Clinton's exploratory Senate campaign. And just when we've started taking it all seriously--stocking up on canned goods, firewood, and cash, and heading for the hills--the experts are coming out again and saying not to panic 'cause it won't really be that bad.

That's not to say there is no concern in the land over what will happen on January 1. Perhaps we just feel helpless and resigned to accept whatever comes, on the understanding that things may go topsy-turvy for a while but then right themselves in the end. That's a reasonable tactic for anyone who uses a PC to send e-mail, plays games, or surfs the Net. But for the rest of us who crunch numbers, make payroll, or trade in goods and services, it might be time to think about Y2K, or it might be too late.

If you want some quick and easy Y2K evaluation, along with some good advice on what to do about it, download the YMARK2000 testing utility available from National Software Testing Labs (NSTL). Look for the rotating links icon at the bottom of the DACS Web site at www.dacs.org.

Probing the millennium

Customarily bored by the media flashbacks that seem to occur at the end of each year, I head for the isles when the psychics start to predict what will happen in the next. But given the magnitude of the leap we are taking into a new century and millennium, I thought it would be good to explore where technology may be taking us. Here are my TOP TEN predictions for the next millennium that will occur soon after spaceship Earth emerges from the other side of the Y2K black hole:

1) PCs will be so fast that they will typically crash before even completing their boot cycle. A common error message will warn users: "Don't even think about touching that key."

2) A stockholder revolt will occur at IBM, and Deep Blue will become new CEO.

3) The first message from space aliens will arrive by e-mail and will be automatically deleted by AOL's spam filter.

4) An upgrade to Microsoft Office will give Paperclip artificial intelligence, and the desktop wizard will go berserk, locking out company executives and cutting off life support at the Redmond headquarters.

5) Persistent problems with Y2K will force Microsoft to adopt the Macintosh for all its corporate accounting.

6) A jaded public will tire of triple-X Websites and will flock to sites promoting meaningful personal relationships.

7) To save processing resources, E-mail spellcheckers will highlight only correct spelling, and language conversion software will intelligently guess what the writer was trying to say.

8) Students will be allowed to take their computers to exams, and a question will be considered successfully answered if the student can accurately state where the information can be found on the Internet.

9) Standard memory for PCs will approach 1 Terabyte (1000 billion bytes) of RAM. The minimum memory required to run Windows will be 1.2 Terabytes.

10) Palm technology will create the virtual workplace by effectively merging voice, video and digital communications. Two-thirds of the U.S. population will be living in Florida.

11) The personal digital assistant will be officially declared a sentient life form, and users will be able to list them as dependents on their tax returns.

12) More than 100,000 couples will pay $1,000,000 apiece for Bill Gates' DNA, and none of the resulting offspring will be successful entrepreneurs.


Allan Ostergren is, as most of you know, the president of DACS. He is also a gifted wordsmith, an outstanding punster, and a tactful manager of talented people.

BackHomeNext