Note sure if anyone here has been following my "Humpty Dumpty Y2K" project, but I thought I would mention that I've just uploaded a first-draft chapter on the likely impact of a post-Y2K world on the media.

You can find it by visiting my site at www.yourdon.com or by clicking here Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (HumptyDumptyY2K@yourdon.com), September 04, 1999

Answers

Thanks Ed! Clicking right on over ... glad to see you're glueing the Egg!

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), September 04, 1999.

Humpty Dumpty was a jerk;

All the horses sensed his quirk;

All the king's men made a smirk;

All we know is IT WON'T WORK!

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), September 04, 1999.

Ed never said the Egg wouldn't be scrambled into a new omelette! With new ingredients we could have another New Morning In America [grin]

Ed, many people may react negatively because it seems too impossible and tedious to put together a stinky rotten fallen Bad Egg.

You have a lot of fortitude to pick up the pieces and stitch, paste and reconstruct a shattered world, mentally, and share your thoughts/writing. There are not enough helpful disciplined creative minds giving principled re-empiring attention. In your world the leaders will emerge with visible clothes! But no cover-ups ;^)

We very much appreciate your efforts and the inherent optimism and strength of spirit evidenced in your writing. You do the Founders of America proud. And you prove the Doomers are actually the true optimists, those strong souls who have the iron mettle to look Reality straight on and deal with it openly, honestly, and practically. And move on to solutions, problem-solving, rebuilding, and preventing reoccurence of previous mistakes.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), September 04, 1999.

Sorry, Ed, I was trapped in rhyme mode. ;)

I'm still amazed to realize that the classical English nursery rhymes were cleverly disguised political satires.

Humpty Dumpty was inept;

Had no thoughts that could be kept;

Lost his dreams while others slept;

Humpty Dumpty grieved and wept.

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), September 04, 1999.

Nicely done chapter Ed, you've been busy today :-)

-- Chris (%$^&^@pond.com), September 04, 1999.

A&L, some days you're so eloquent! ;-)

-- Chris (%$^&^@pond.com), September 04, 1999.

Humpty Dumpty was an egg,

Seated high upon his wall;

Had no wants, no need to beg;

Then God's judgment made him fall.

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), September 04, 1999.

Humpty Dumpty had a curse;

He was dead, what could get worse?

While the king's men called a hearse,

Someone stole the old egg's purse.

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), September 04, 1999.

Interesting chapter. If we have a bad outcome, I suspect the media will be harder on themselves than we are on them. They won't be near the top of the list of scapegoats. Nevertheless, the general public would likely be left with a distrust of public information in general, which could be further destabilizing.

-- Bill Byars (billbyars@softwaresmith.com), September 05, 1999.

Humpty Dumpty was a frog;

Dinosaur unearthed a bog;

Y2K became a fog;

Aftermath was analog.

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), September 05, 1999.

Mr. Randolph Sir,

I take it by the amount of poetry you wrote that you:

a.Don't respect Mr. Yourdon (the creator of the (semi) free speech forum your posting on.

b. Feel sorry for his attempt at what you consider is a proverbial arranging of the deck chairs

Certainly hope it is B.

Don't take me wrong. But you must admit having this forum may possible help alot of good people!!

-- Dave Butts (dciinc@aol.com), September 05, 1999.

Thanks Ed,

Will read it in the a.m. -- after strong coffee -- so I can coherently comment.

(What can I say... it's the weekend!)

;-D

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), September 05, 1999.

I'm afraid that we may be in a 'pre' founding fathers era in the near future. This would account for the recent *flagging* of critical real estate by the present elite. These areas designated for the New World to include wilderness areas, parks, and reserves, to be under the control and auspices of the UN (read NWO). Most of these areas probably will escape the poisons dispensed during the breakdown.

So the way of empire building of the past, is taking place now, under the guise of co-operation among member states. I believe they know full well what this way comes.

The current practices portend the worst, belie the security of the status quo to the masses, and stink of positioning and continued control in the future. The thing about practicing futurism is, this certainty of knowing the next card from the deck, is susceptible to error, no matter how slight, and the resulting hand may be a bust.

Too bad we have to be the payee for the shills.

-- Michael (mikeymac@uswest.net), September 05, 1999.

Randolph, your lines are funny, hope your fancy just tickled by Egg imagery, eggsistintial eggcitement.

Michael, right on! As you know we love Parks, but really! tis quite the elitist LandGrab Cull :~6

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), September 05, 1999.

It would appear that y2k isn't really "news" yet in the traditional sense -- it hasn't really happened, and news reporting is focused on what happens. PR releases are events, they happened, so they can be reported on. The *contents* of these releases aren't events. Polls, surveys, or warnings issued by newsworthy-level organizations (US Senate, Taskforce2000 in the UK) are events and the contents can be covered, but the events being warned against haven't happened, and aren't news.

Yourdon bemoans the lack of a y2k Bernstein and Woodward, to go out there and ferret out the real situation, presenting it in full detail, all of its gory glory. This lack, unfortunately suffers a problem Bernstein and Woodward never did -- Nixon's crimes had already happened. They could be dug up and demonstrated. The truth really *was* out there. But in the case of y2k, the truth (in this sense) will happen or won't happen in the future. It's just not out there yet. Legitimate reasons to be concerned about real possibilities is certainly out there. But they're still only possibilities, they aren't facts to be reported, verified, or proved.

Yourdon should (IMO) exhibit a bit more caution here than he does in this chapter. He appears to regret that the media haven't depicted y2k as being as serious as (what Yourdon himself admits is) a small minority believes it to be. The reader is left with the sense that Yourdon is recommending that the media become indistinguishable from a *propaganda vehicle*, sounding an alarm just in case, through the expedient of adopting a viewpoint more like Yourdon's.

The real Bernstein and Woodward investigated what *did* happen, when everyone else was buying the administration's coverup. But the B&W Yourdon wants wouldn't so much be investigators, as advocates. They wouldn't be finding out what already happened, they'd be trying to persuade the public of the veracity of what they *believe* will happen in the future. This isn't reporting, much less investigative. Apparently if Yourdon's truth isn't out there, someone *ought* to create it.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 05, 1999.

Dave Butts:

The answer is C: I'm having fun with the old nursery rhyme.

I like Ed Yourdon.

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), September 05, 1999.

In response to Flint's comments: Y2K hasn't happened yet, but many related things have happened or are claimed to have happened. For example, the FAA claims its Y2K remediation has been independently verified. Maybe that verification has itself been verified, but if so I haven't seen it. I'm just using that as an example. Would Woodward and Bernstein have taken the FAA's word for it, considering the discrepancies between federal agency reports vs. GAO reports?

-- Bill Byars (billbyars@softwaresmith.com), September 05, 1999.

Bill Byars:

By implication, you illustrate the problems a modern Bernstein and Woodward would face. So the FAA says they're ready. But FAA has an awful track record historically, despite their assurances. So then FAA says they've been verified. But now, you want the verification to be verified. And if that happened, you'd want the verification- verifiers to be verified! This is what I meant by advocacy.

Now lets say that a modern B&W waded into this swamp, and started really digging into all of these government announcements to try to assess how close to reality they might be (or might not be). What we've discovered here (and B&W surely would as well) is that the issue is fractal in nature -- similar at every scale. So they look at some agency that says they're "98% compliant". First, they discover that this only applies to critical systems, and second they discover that critical systems are only 10% of total systems, and third they discover that the number of systems considered critical has been shrinking, perhaps to meet reporting requirements.

OK, do you have a scoop here? Well, not really. Just what do we mean by compliant? What do we mean by critical? Just what is a "system" for that matter? As you dig deeper, you find that you can't find agreement as to the magnitude of the danger the organization faces anywhere -- not among the managers, nor among the administrators, nor among the geeks.

Let's say you got lucky and found a "system" guaranteed to fail in some known way. It's guaranteed because nobody has any plans to fix it. And let's ignore the fact that your story will light a fire under this system. Anyway, can you now point to some function guaranteed to fail? Well, no you can't. It depends entirely on *how* this system fails, and on *what* can be done about it (fix it in hours, work around it, drop it from the mission, whatever).

So no matter how powerful your magnifying glass and how narrowly focused you are to get real nitty gritty detail, you continue to run into ambiguity, probabilities, predictions. At every scale. And yes, you can conclude that the government is almost surely sugar-coating their readiness reports, in the opinion of the reporters. But whether their opinions are realistic is another story, that only hindsight has any hope of illuminating (at best).

An honest B&W would only be able to say "we don't know" at deeper and deeper levels of detail. But I don't think this is what Yourdon was asking for?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 05, 1999.

Mr. Flint,

very Succinct.

Not that you care, but---don't know---imho is cause for the manifestation of critiques for any and all who imply,infer,argue that anyone uncomfortable with---(Don't know)---is a doomer!!

What is it exactly that--WE DONT KNOW?

Therein lies the the challenge? We Do not know what the effects will be.

How horrific! I honestly empathize with anyones opinion of the outcome, without arrogantly defending mine.

Therefore according to your own words--Nobody knows--if anyone including the founder of the forum is suspect of the media attention being given to this potentialy life threatening (my opinion,prove me wrong, since nobodies knows) unknown. How can that persons articulated concern be critiqued?

%%nobody knows%% unfrigging believable!!

-- Dave Butts (dciinc@aol.com), September 05, 1999.

To Flint: There's a Latin quote I can't remember which means, "Who will guard the guards themselves?" Yes, you can't go on verifying ad infinitum. And as I said earlier in this thread, the media won't be near the top of the list of scapegoats if we have a bad outcome. Nevertheless I think it's reasonable to verify that one layer of "guards" is satisfied. I think we agree the media's job may be especially difficult here.

-- Bill Byars (billbyars@softwaresmith.com), September 05, 1999.

Flint, If you grew up in the 50's (and I seem to recall that you did), then surely you remember the "duck and cover" campaign? As alarm was raised about the potential consequences of the Cold War, based on pure speculation because it had not happened yet. Our government took the stakes so seriously that elementary school children around the nation were routinely drilled on hiding under their desks in case of incoming bombs! Can you still remember the "duck and cover" video and jingle we all had memorized because we were treated to it every time we went to the movies?

This was a massive awareness campaign, beginning at the highest levels of government and communicated through the media and school systems...even though nothing had happened yet. And, nothing did happen. Still, nobody screamed for the scoundrels to be thrown from office for scaring us so needlessly, nobody ridiculed or blamed the people who took our government's warnings so seriously that they built bomb shelters in their backyards, and nobody accused the media of journalistic irresponsibility for their active participation in warning the citizenry of possible consequences. We were given the speculative information our government had, and we were encouraged to prepare as we saw fit.

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), September 05, 1999.

RUOK:

Yes, I did grow up in the 50's, and I remember the duck and cover exercises quite well. And you make several good points bringing this up (also you bring back memories and make me think!).

There are several key differences between then and now, I believe, but you might want to add your own. Indeed, I invite *everyone* to suggest what might have changed in the meantime.

1) We knew in pretty good detail what an exploding atom bomb would do. Hiroshima was vivid in everyone's memory. And we'd had above- ground tests in Nevada and in the Pacific. Extrapolating from these known events didn't take a whole lot of imagination. In contrast, we haven't even (to my knowledge) done computer simulations to try to guess the ramafications of date bugs in computer software. And certainly *I* wouldn't want to do any such simulations, since in that case the computer would only be echoing the assumptions built into the inputs.

2) In the 50's, the war was still a real presence -- we were still fighting it in many ways. The returned veterans had first-hand experiences, books and movies had us winning the war ad nauseum. Today, no large part of the US public has seen war for a generation or two, since Vietnam. And even that was less immediate. I don't think we're considered quite as ready and willing to make sacrifices today as was expected during the 50's. Rightly or wrongly.

3) Back then, the danger was posed by a Great Enemy. And at the time, we viewed the world in terms of a Great Enemy, requiring only a change of name. Today, y2k is OUR error, not theirs. And it's really an accident, not an evil *person* pressing a button. And where nobody is responsible, everyone is responsible. If there are real problems, you don't want to speak up (politically) and be a lightning rod. You'll be identified with the problems (if any) in the public mind.

4) Most informed people (myself included, I admit) don't really expect y2k to amount to all that much. Yes, we have a vocal minority who expect Big Trouble. But much as that minority might claim that everyone else is either clueless or mendacious, most informed people consider them simply wrong. They have, however sincerely, put the puzzle pieces together to form the wrong picture. The problem (at least outside these narrow walls) is considered to be real, and have been really addressed, and although strange things can be guaranteed, and lots of people will be really pissed by the confusions and inconvencies sure to come, basically we'll muddle through this in a few months and be on the way to 15,000 by 2005 (Yardeni).

All in all, I think there may be a political difference between a specific, known hazard posed by some external enemy (which may or may not come to pass), and an unknown hazard, posed by potentially anything around us, for which nobody is specifically responsible, and for which specific precautions cannot be described. It's just hard for most people to see y2k as a big deal, and the sense of urgency would be damn hard for the government to build if they wanted to -- y2k just ain't telegenic like Hiroshima was.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 05, 1999.

Flint -- You have completely missed the forest for the trees. The entire premise of Yourdon's book is that Y2K WILL be very serious. Not that this is a prediction -- if Y2K isn't, the book will not be published or, if published before rollover, ignored and riduculed, as Ed is VERY well aware of.

IF Y2K proves to be very serious (depression), it will be evident that many of our institutions slipped up in providing advance warning (think: preparations like my neighbors having NOTHING ready) and possible prevention (more remediation jawboned globally) but how? when? what is the remedy, if any (there may indeed not be one)? Who should be blamed (if anyone, maybe no one)?

What any of this has to do with the idea that the theme (the forest) of this chapter is a rehash of Woodward&Bernstein is beyond me. The theme, Flint, the theme.

Now what I would expect you to challenge (though only because you seem to feel you must NEVER agree with anything anyone says here, ironic since you charge everyone else with that) is that a bad Y2K impact suggests significant failure in the way our institutions approach potential crisis (e.g., media among them). But maybe I'm wrong. Sincerely hope so.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), September 05, 1999.

Big Dog:

I admit I didn't know when Yourdon had planned to publish (or quash) this book, but the topic sentence of this entire chapter reads:

"If Y2K does turn out to be a moderate-to-serious crisis, it's inevitable that the media will be blamed for not having covered the topic more seriously in 1997-1999, and for parroting the optimistic assessments of government officials and industry spokesmen. "

The first word here is IF. To me, this implied that the book would be published before such issues were beyond doubt. Indeed, much of the chapter is careful to include an IF in this same sense. Many times, Yourdon says IF things are bad, and IF we have this failure or that. Surely these words are intended to be read while the issue is still in doubt?

So what I tried to say was, what position is Yourdon recommending that the media take today? After all, even if we're going to second guess what was written after the fact, those second guesses are STILL changeable as we speak today.

It seems rather silly to build the chapter around the notion that IF y2k turns out to be Very Bad, THEN the media should have ferreted out these dangers and emphasized them at every opportunity -- and created such opportunities as necessary. But I believe there is little question but that the preponderance of y2k evidence today doesn't point in any clear direction. To be the clarion call of warning, the media must therefore "take sides" and perform in an advocacy role in favor of such a warning. But to anyone who doesn't believe such warnings are justified by current circumstances, this position cannot be distinguished from deliberately spinning the story.

Yes, I agree there's lots of stuff written out there on which you can build a strong, well-documented case that we're not out of the woods yet. And the "media" in question aren't playing up this material very strongly, since most of it takes the form of hearing transcripts, SEC reporting, press releases by "watchdogs" such as Taskforce2000 or Cap Gemini, and various documents of uncertain pedigree available around the net. Of course, the media aren't trying to build any systematic case that y2k won't be bad either. It just isn't that important a story yet, one way or the other.

And I confess my own optimism is based in no small part on this last observation, though there's a feedback loop, no question. The media don't see y2k as much of an issue, so they don't often mention it, so people don't read about it much, so they don't think it's an issue, so the media see little sense in covering it. And of course, little or nothing has happened yet, and there are no good pictures or sound bites either (as Yourdon points out).

My point was, you must be committed to y2k as being a Big Deal before you see the economic sense of assigning a bunch of high-powered reporters to the story, and giving it a lot of column inches (or TV minutes), pursuing it and giving it a real media presence. And you're not going to make that committment if you feel y2k will pass uneventfully. That is NOT a Big Deal. So you need to convert a few key editors at important networks and newspapers and AP, Reuters, etc. You need to convince them that hey, we have bad weather ahead, and we can't avoid it. Sure, it's calm and clear now, but it won't stay that way and you need to get the word out while people can still take action!

So far, nobody's been able to do this. For better or worse (and it can only be for worse. If nothing happens and we weren't warned, we got lucky).

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 05, 1999.

For the sake of discussion on this thread ....

My position (actually, it is the position of some reasonable DGI friends) is: if I were a journalist (or a publisher), even (perhaps especially) non-computer literate and I had been presented with any of the reasonably credible warning of potential disaster (the Senate report will do for starters), I would have taken this attitude:

1. Either this is an outrageous hoax that should be exposed or ...

2. I need to get to the bottom of this because it could be the most important story of my career.

Yes, granted, there are all sorts of grey shades that might be discovered en route, but there seems to have been a surprising absence of this attitude, generally speaking. That is, a SERIOUS attitude that results in SERIOUS journalism.

I admit right off that I am using "I" throughout. This is what "I" would have done. Obviously, I'm weird. Or, if now, maybe journalism today really is rather bankrupt. That is a logical possibility as well.

It is also not an unreasonable possibility that major media were warned off treating Y2K with this seriousness by Koskinen, Kelly and other government figures. You don't have to invoke conspiracy with a capital "C". They go to parties together, vacation together, etc. "C"onsensus is good enough.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), September 05, 1999.

Big Dog:

Agree that there's a consensus. But I don't think the media types believe they're dealing with a credible indication of a potential *disaster*. This distinction is critical in their minds, is my bet.

We certainly have *lots* of fairly credible indication of potential problems, but you have to read the tealeaves pretty damn loose and liberal to read disaster into them. It's not impossible, but not all that easy either. If the iron triangle holds (and all indications are that it will), there's no big economic hit, no big infrastructure breakdown, then everything else is a local news story.

But this begs a big question -- how big is big, from the media's perspective? We've been seeing 200 point daily Dow swings, and the media yawn. We've had ice storms knocking out power for weeks, and it's local news. And of course, losing power over 11 Western states isn't as important as losing power on Manhattan Island, if you're the media.

I don't believe the media consider y2k a hoax per se. Yeah, there's bugs, there will be screwups, we'll cover them if they're interesting, after they happen and we know what we're covering. Now, efforts to blow y2k up into a disaster of Great Depression proportions, that might well look like a hoax. But few responsible voices are doing that.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 05, 1999.

Basically, the Bad Times will come.

Governmental spin will deny this inevitability.

Many complacent people will believe the political spin.

Then the Bad Times will come.

People will suffer horrendously.

Prepare now, or forever dream on.

The greatest nightmare in history will soon befall our planet!

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), September 05, 1999.