Deleted Scene #16
Chapter Five:
The
New Ordering Principle
Section: Overtaken
By Events
Commentary: This sixteenth
"deleted scene" was my attempt to link the Y2K work directly to
9/11 by citing one of the conclusions from the Year 2000 International
Security Dimension Project final report. I wasn't going for any I-told-ya-so
effect, just demonstrating that a 9/11-like event was something that many
of us in the Y2K business had foreseen as a result of being exposed to all
the complexity that is the infrastructure and "new economy" of
this country at the turn of the century. It would have appeared as the
first full paragraph on the top of page 257. Mark cut it, I imagine, for
being too self-congratulatory -- a good decision.
Deleted Scene: Y2K As A
Learning Experience For Anticipating A 9/11-Like Event
[TEXT BEGINS]
My Y2K report concluded with a series of "cosmic
conclusions," the first being:
How You Describe Y2K Depends on From When You View
It
People who describe Y2K as "different in
kind" from anything humanity has ever experienced, or something
that is unique, tend to look at the event from the perspective of the
past century. But those who look at Y2K from the perspective of the
coming century, exhibit the exact opposite tendencies: they tend to
describe Y2K as only "different in degree" from the sort of
system perturbations humanity will increasingly face as we become more
interconnected and interdependent on a global scale. In their minds,
then, Y2K is a genuine harbinger of 'next definitions' of international
instabilities or uncertainty -- in effect, a new type of crisis that
leaves us particularly uncomfortable with its lack of a clearly
identifiable "enemy" or "threat" with associated
motivations.
Our bottom line (paraphrasing Rick in Casablanca):
We'll always have Y2K . . ..
Except of course, now we call it "9/11."
[TEXT ENDS]
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