In the introduction, Ed says, "What about after Y2K has come and gone? Whether the effects last for a day, or a month, or a year, there should come a point at which we can say, 'Okay, it's over. Now it's time to put the pieces back together again. Humpty Dumpty fell from the wall -- now we have to see whether al lthe king's men can put him back together again.'"

This seems to suggest that the Humpty Dumpty book is intended to be used in an era when the Y2K problems are largely behind us, which in the more extreme scenarios could be years away. But publishing lead times (assuming publishing companies are still operating, etc.) could allow the book to come out much sooner, perhaps spring or summer of 2000, when Y2K effects may still be in full swing in even some of the more moderate scenarios.

It would seem that a book which comes out in the middle of a Y2K crisis needs to be different from one which comes out after the dust has settled. Which is the goal here, and what is the expected time frame for this project?

-- Hal (hal@finney.org), August 09, 1999

Answers

Hal,

I deleted a troll posting on this thread; I hope the rest of it still makes sense.

The answer to your question is: I don't know. At this point, I still don't really know whether all of this will "jell" into a book. I've now written some 4 chapters out of roughly 20, but I need to do a few more before I can be confident that a "critical mass" exists ... Thus far, based on the feedback and level of interest, I'm fairly confident.

As for timing: I doubt there would be much of a market for such a book before January 1, 2000 -- and the level of interest afterwards will be highly influenced by however good or bad Y2K turns out to be.

Publishers are now capable of turning a manuscript around in 2-3 months, or even faster if they feel a sense of urgency (in the case of "Time Bomb 2000", it was about 7 weeks). So I'm not worried about that part.

Meanwhile, for those who DO have an interest in the topic, the fact that the chapters and the forum discussions are available in "real time" on the Web makes the whole issue moot. Anyone is welcome to print out the manuscript chapters and distribute them to friends and family as they see fit (kinda demolishes the "greedy capitalist pig" characterization of the troll posting I just deleted, but that's a different story).

If I stay on course, I think I'll have the majority of a complete manuscript available here by mid-autumn. At that point, we may have a better idea of whether the outcome of Y2K looks better or worse than it appears today. And we may have a better idea of whether "mainstream America" has any interest in the topics we're discussing. If not, the book can live on the Internet forever, as far as I'm concerned.

Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (HumptyDumptyY2K@yourdon.com), August 12, 1999.

I'm going to assume that someone forged that response supposedly from Ed Yourdan claiming that the goal was "$$$ for me". Granted that Ed does derive some portion of his income from book sales, I would hope that he has a larger goal in mind in a project of this type.

It seems to me that there is a problem, though, if the book is supposed to be published in early to mid 2000, in that much of the book will automatically be irrelevant. We know so little now about the nature of the outcome that many of our speculations are going to turn out to be wrong. Half or more of the book is likely to be obsolete by the time it is published, because it will deal with scenarios that turn out to be either much worse or much better than what actually happens. As a historical document the book might be interesting, recording our hopes and fears as we approach Y2K in a more permanent record than usenet and discussion boards. But as advice, as recommendations, our position is far less informed than those of the readers who are dealing with Y2K in progress or the aftermath on a day to day basis.

Maybe it would be better to wait until a few months into Y2K, when the overall scope of the effects will be much more clear, and then discard the half of the book which turned out to be all wrong, as well as the recommendations for those inaccurate scenarios. You'd end up doing a lot of wasted work, but you could still get the book into the stores before the end of the year 2000.

Hal

-- Hal (hal@finney.org), August 10, 1999.