A most interesting website IMO.
Steve
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http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/6926/y2krep.html
Conclusions of the US Naval War College Year 2000 International Security
Dimension Project Report
Conclusion #1�
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
Conclusion #2�
Y2K Moves Us From Haves-vs-Have Nots to Competents-vs-Incompetents
Success at dealing with Y2K has a lot to do with resources, and anyone
who
believes otherwise is painfully naive. And yet, defeating the challenge
of
Y2K says as much or more about one's competency than it does about one's
wealth. The rich can survive Y2K just fine, but only the truly clever
can
thrive in Y2K, which IT competents tend to view as a sped-up market
experience within the larger operational paradigm of the New Economy.
The rise of "virtual tigers" such as India's software industry,
Ireland's
high-tech manufacturing, or Israel's Wadi Valley, tell us that it
doesn't
necessarily take a wealthy country to succeed in the New Economy, just a
very competent one. Y2K may well serve as a microcosmic experience that
drives this new reality home to many more around the planet: it's less
about
what you have than what you can do.
For in the end, Y2K is less about vulnerability and dependency, then
dealing
with vulnerability and dependency. You can buy your way toward
invulnerability and independency, but you can also work around
vulnerabilities and dependency.
Our bottom line: Competents will thrive, while incompetents nosedive.
Conclusion #3�
Y2K As A Glimpse Into the 21st Century:
Divisions Become Less Vertical and More Horizontal
The 20th Century featured an unprecedented amount of human suffering and
death stemming from wars, and these conflicts came to embody humanity's
definition of strife -- namely, state-on-state warfare. The divisions
that
drove these conflicts can be described as "vertical," meaning peoples
were
separated--from top to bottom--by political and geographic boundaries,
known
as state borders.
If the 20th Century was the century of inter-state war, then the 21st is
going to be the century of intra-state or civil strife. Divisions of
note
will exist on a "horizontal" plane, or between layers of people that
coexist
within a single state's population. These layers will be largely defined
by
wealth, as they have been throughout recorded history. But increasingly,
that wealth will depend on competency rather than possession of
resources.
Y2K will help crystallize this coming reality by demonstrating, in one
simultaneous global experience, who is good at dealing with the
NewEconomy,
globalization, the Information Revolution, etc., and who is not. And
these
divisions will form more within countries than between them, as borders
will
become increasingly less relevant markers of where success begins and
failure ends.
The coming century of conflict will revolve around these horizontal
divisions.
Our bottom line: We have met the enemy, and they is us.
Conclusion #4�
Y2K Will Demonstrate the Price of Secrecy and the Promise of
Transparency
Those who are more open and transparent and share information more
freely
will do better with Y2K than those who hoard information, throw up
firewalls, and refuse outside help. Secrecy will backfire in almost all
instances, leading to misperceptions and harmful, stupidly
self-fulfilling
actions. Governments must be as open with their populations as possible,
or
suffer serious political backlashes if and when Y2K proves more
significant
for their countries than they had previously let on. People's fears
about
"invisible technology" will either be conquered or fed by how Y2K
unfolds.
This is a pivotal moment in human history: the first time Information
Technology has threatened to bite back in a systematic way. In a very
Nietzschean manner, Y2K will either "kill" us or make us stronger, and
the
balance of secrecy versus transparency will decide much, if not all, of
that
outcome.
Our bottom line: The future is transparency--get used to it!
Conclusion #5�
Our Final Take on Y2K:
As It Becomes Less Frightening, It Becomes More Profound
The more you accept the notion that Y2K represents the future and not
some
accident of the past . . . the more you see it as different in degree
than
in kind from the challenges we will increasingly face . . .and the more
you
realize that it's part and parcel of the globalized, IT-driven New
Economy
than some exogenous one-time disaster, then the more profoundly will Y2K
loom in your psyche even as it becomes less frightening with regard to
the
010100-threshold.
Why? Because the more it becomes associated with the broader reality of
our
increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, the more
inescapable
it becomes. In short, you can sit out the Millennium Date Change Event
and
all the hoopla surrounding it, but there's no avoiding Y2K in the
big-picture sense, because the skills it demands from humanity are those
same skills needed for our not-so-collective advance into the brave new
world of the 21st Century.
Our bottom line: There's no escaping Y2K.
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