Meg Wheatley et al on Y2K - Part 1: The Problem

[Jeff Aitken]

The response to my offer was overwhelming in just a few days. So I take the
chance to send this 3-part article to the list. You are welcome to complain
at me if you wish! I do think this is very significant for all of us.

Jeff

>Subject: Meg Wheatley et al on Y2K - Part 1: The Problem
>
>Dear friends:
>
>Among many of my friends and associates, Meg Wheatley's book LEADERSHIP AND
>THE NEW SCIENCE stands as a revolution in organizational thought.  The fact
>that she takes The Year 2000 problem seriously is significant news in my
>network.  The fact that she and two colleagues have written a compelling
>and visionary article on the subject offers hope, and a resource we can
>pass on to those we know.  I received it as an email attachment, which
>produced a somewhat garbled document that I have cleaned up so that anyone
>can relay it as email.  It will also appear on my Y2K web site <
>http://www.co-intelligence.org/y2k_breakthrough.html >.  The authors want
>this article spread as far and wide as it can go.  Due to the limits of my
>own email program, this article comes to you in two parts:  Part 1:  The
>Problem, and Part 2: The Response.  The article broke down nicely in this
>way, but the division is mine, not the authors'.  I hope you find it
>interesting and useful -- and that together we can make something good come
>of all this.
>
>Coheartedly,
>
>Tom
>
>_ _ _ _ _ _ _
>
>
>The Year 2000: Social Chaos or Social Transformation?
>
>        by
>
>        John L. Petersen, Margaret Wheatley, Myron Kellner-Rogers
>
>
>The Millenial sun will first rise over human civilization in the
>independent republic of Kiribati, a group of some thirty low lying coral
>islands in the Pacific Ocean that straddle the equator and the
>International Date Line, halfway between Hawaii and Australia. This long
>awaited sunrise marks the dawn of the year 2000, and quite possibly, the
>onset of unheralded disruptions in life as we know it in many parts of the
>globe.  Kiribati's 81,000 Micronesians may observe nothing different about
>this dawn; they only received TV in 1989.  However, for those who live in a
>world that relies on satellites, air, rail and ground transportation,
>manufacturing plants, electricity, heat, telephones, or TV, when the
>calendar clicks from '99 to '00, we will experience a true millennial
>shift. As the sun moves westward on January 1, 2000, as the date shifts
>silently within millions of computerized systems, we will begin to
>experience our computer-dependent world in an entirely new way.  We will
>finally see the extent of the networked and interdependent processes we
>have created.  At the stroke of midnight, the new millenium heralds the
>greatest challenge to modern society we have yet to face as a planetary
>community.  Whether we experience this as chaos or social transformation
>will be influenced by what we do immediately.
>
>        We are describing the year 2000 problem, known as Y2K (K signifying
>1000). Nicknamed at first  "The Millennial Bug," increasing sensitivity to
>the magnitude of the impending crisis has escalated it to "The Millennial
>Bomb."  The problem begins as a simple technical error.  Large mainframe
>computers more than ten years old were not programmed to handle a four
>digit year.  Sitting here now, on the threshold of the year 2000, it seems
>incomprehensible that computer programmers and microchip designers didn't
>plan for it.  But when these billions of lines of computer code were being
>written, computer memory was very expensive.  Remember when a computer only
>had 16 kilobytes of RAM?  To save storage space, most programmers allocated
>only two digits to a year.  1993 is '93' in data files, 1917 is '17'.
>These two-digit dates exist on millions of files used as input to millions
>of applications. (The era in which this code was written was described by
>one programming veteran as "the Wild West."  Programmers did whatever was
>required to get a product up and working; no one even thought about
>standards.)
>
>        The same thing happened in the production of microchips as recently
>as three years ago. Microprocessors and other integrated circuits are often
>just sophisticated calculators that count and do math.  They count many
>things: fractions of seconds, days, inches, pounds, degrees, lumens, etc.
>Many chips that had a time function designed into them were only structured
>for this century. And when the date goes from '99 to '00 both they and the
>legacy software that has not been fixed will think it is still the 20th
>century -- not 2000, but 1900.
>
>        Peter de Jager, who has been actively studying the problem and its
>implications since 1991, explains the computer math calculation: "I was
>born in 1955.  If I ask the computer to calculate how old I am today, it
>subtracts 55 from 98 and announces that I'm 43. . .  But what happens in
>the year 2000?  The computer will subtract 55 from 00 and will state that I
>am  minus 55 years old.  This error will affect any calculation that
>produces or uses time spans. . . . If you want to sort by date (e.g., 1965,
>1905, 1966), the resulting sequence would be 1905, 1965, 1966.  However, if
>you add in a date record such as 2015, the computer, which reads only the
>last two digits of the date, sees 05, 15, 65, 66 and sorts them
>incorrectly.  These are just two types of calculations that are going to
>produce garbage." [Peter de Jager, www.year2000.com]
>
>        The calculation problem explains why the computer system at Marks &
>Spencer department store in London recently destroyed tons of food during
>the process of doing a long term forecast.  The computer read 2002 as 1902.
>Instead of four more years of shelf life, the computer calculated that
>this food was ninety-six years old.  It ordered it thrown out. [United
>Airlines, Flight Talk Network, February 1998] A similar problem happened
>recently in the U.S. at the warehouse of a freeze dried food manufacturer.
>
>        But Y2K is not about wasting good food.  Date calculations affect
>millions more systems than those that deal with inventories, interest
>rates, or insurance policies.  Every major aspect of our modern
>infrastructure has systems and equipment that rely on such calculations to
>perform their functions.  We are dependent on computerized systems that
>contain date functions to effectively manage defense, transportation, power
>generation, manufacturing, telecommunications, finance, government,
>education, healthcare.  The list is longer, but the picture is clear.  We
>have created a world whose efficient functioning in all but the poorest and
>remotest areas is dependent on computers.  It doesn't matter whether you
>personally use a computer, or that most people around the world don't even
>have telephones.  The world's economic and political infrastructures rely
>on computers.  And not isolated computers.  We have created dense networks
>of reliance around the globe.  We are networked together for economic and
>political purposes. Whatever happens in one part of the network has an
>impact on other parts of the network.  We have created not only a
>computer-dependent society, but an interdependent planet.
>
>        We already have frequent experiences with how fragile these systems
>are, and how failure cascades through a networked system.  While each of
>these systems relies on millions of lines of code that detail the required
>processing, they handle their routines in serial fashion. Any next step
>depends on the preceding step.  This serial nature makes systems, no matter
>their size, vulnerable to even the slightest problem anywhere in the
>system.  In 1990, ATT's long distance system experienced repeated failures.
>At that time, it took two million lines of computer code to keep the
>system operational. But these millions of lines of code were brought down
>by just three lines of faulty code.
>
>        And these systems are lean; redundancies are eliminated in the name
>of efficiency. This leanness also makes the system highly vulnerable.   In
>May of this year, 90% of all pagers in the U.S. crashed for a day or longer
>because of the failure of one satellite.  Late in 1997, the Internet could
>not deliver email to the appropriate addresses because bad information from
>their one and only central source corrupted their servers.
>
>        Compounding the fragility of these systems is the fact that we
>can't see the extent of our interconnectedness.  The networks that make
>modern life possible are masked by the technology.  We only see the
>interdependencies when the relationships are disrupted -- when a problem
>develops elsewhere and we notice that we too are having problems.  When
>Asian markets failed last year, most U.S. businesses denied it would have
>much of an impact on our economy.  Only recently have we felt the extent to
>which Asian economic woes affect us directly.   Failure in one part of a
>system always exposes the levels of interconnectedness that otherwise go
>unnoticed -- we suddenly see how our fates are linked together.  We see how
>much we are participating with one another, sustaining one another.
>
>
>        Modern business is completely reliant on networks.  Companies have
>vendors, suppliers, customers, outsourcers (all, of course, managed by
>computerized data bases.)   For Y2K, these highly networked ways of doing
>business create a terrifying scenario.  The networks  mean that no one
>system can protect itself from Y2K failures by just attending to its own
>internal systems.   General Motors, which has been working with
>extraordinary focus and diligence to bring their manufacturing plants up to
>Year 2000 compliance (based on their assessment that they were facing
>catastrophe) has 100,000 suppliers worldwide.  Bringing their internal
>systems into compliance seems nearly impossible, but what then do they do
>with all those vendors who supply parts?  GM experiences production
>stoppages whenever one key supplier goes on strike.  What is the potential
>number of delays and shutdowns possible among 100,000 suppliers?
>
>         The nature of systems and our history with them paints a chilling
>picture of the Year 2000.  We do not know the extent of the failures, or
>how we will be affected by them.  But we do know with great certainty that
>as computers around the globe respond or fail when their calendars record
>2000, we will see clearly the extent of our interdependence.  We will see
>the ways in which we have woven the modern world together through our
>technology.
>
>
>        What, me worry?
>
>        Until quite recently, it's been difficult to interest most people
>in the Year 2000 problem.  Those who are publicizing the problem (the
>Worldwide Web is the source of the most extensive  information on Y2K)
>exclaim about the general lack of awareness, or even the deliberate
>blindness that greets them.  In our own investigation among many varieties
>of organizations and citizens, we've noted two general categories of
>response.  In the first category, people acknowledge the problem but view
>it as restricted to a small number of businesses, or a limited number of
>consequences.  People believe that Y2K affects only a few industries --
>primarily finance and insurance -- seemingly because they deal with dates
>on policies and accounts.  Others note that their organization is affected
>by Y2K, but still view it as a well-circumscribed issue that is being
>addressed by their information technology department.  What's common to
>these comments is that people hold Y2K as a narrowly-focused, bounded
>problem.  They seem oblivious to the networks in which they participate, or
>to the systems and interconnections of modern life.
>
>        The second category of reactions reveals the great collective faith
>in technology and science.  People describe Y2K as a technical problem, and
>then enthusiastically state that human ingenuity and genius always finds a
>way to solve these type of problems.  Ecologist David Orr has noted that
>one of the fundamental beliefs of our time is that technology can be
>trusted to solve any problem it creates. ["Slow Knowledge,"  ____1997]  If
>a software engineer goes on TV claiming to have created a program that can
>correct all systems, he is believed.  After all, he's just what we've been
>expecting.
>
>        And then there is the uniqueness of the Year 2000 problem.  At no
>other time in history have we been forced to deal with a deadline that is
>absolutely non-negotiable.  In the past, we could always hope for a last
>minute deal, or rely on round-the-clock bargaining, or pray for an eleventh
>hour savior.  We have never had to stare into the future knowing the
>precise date when the crisis would materialize.  In a bizarre fashion, the
>inevitability of this confrontation seems to add to people's denial of it.
>They know the date when the extent of the problem will surface, and choose
>not to worry about it until then.
>
>        However, this denial is quickly dissipating.  Information on Y2K is
>expanding exponentially, matched by an escalation in adjectives used to
>describe it.  More public figures are speaking out.  This is critically
>important.  With each calendar tick of this time, alternatives diminish and
>potential problems grow.  We must develop strategies for preparing
>ourselves at all levels to deal with whatever Y2K presents to us with the
>millennium dawn.
>
>        What we know about Y2K:  It is
>            o   a technological problem that cannot be solved by technology
>            o   the first-ever, non-negotiable deadline
>            o   a systemic crisis that no one can solve alone
>            o   a crisis that transcends boundaries and hierarchies
>            o   an opportunity to evoke greater capacity from
>                   individuals and organizations
>            o   an opportunity to simplify and redesign major systems
>
>
>        The Y2K problem, really
>
>        We'd like to describe in greater detail the extent of Y2K. As a
>global network of interrelated consequences, it begins at the center with
>the technical problem, legacy computer codes and embedded microchips.  For
>the last thirty years thousands of programmers have been writing billions
>of lines of software code for the computers on which the world's economy
>and society now depend.  Y2K reporter Ed Meagher describes "old,
>undocumented code written in over 2500 different computer languages and
>executed on thousands of different hardware platforms being controlled by
>hundreds of different operating systems . . . [that generate] further
>complexity in the form of billions of six character date fields stored in
>millions of databases that are used in calculations." ["The Complexity
>Factor" by Ed Meagher at www.year2000.com/archive/NFcomplexity.html]  The
>Gartner Group, a computer-industry research group, estimates that globally,
>180 billion lines of software code will have to be screened. ["Industry
>Wakes Up to the Year 2000 Menace," FORTUNE, April 27, 1998]  Peter de Jager
>notes that it is not unusual for a company to have more than 100,000,000
>lines of code -- the IRS, for instance, has at least eighty million lines.
>The Social Security Administration began working on its thirty million
>lines of code in 1991.  After five years of work, in June, 1996, four
>hundred programmers had fixed only six million lines.  The IRS has 88,000
>