From News for a Change
At 12:01 a.m. on January 1, 2000 we both breathed a sigh of relief and simultaneously attended a coronation. Our relief was that the TV worked, ATM machines kept delivering cash, and the streetlights stayed on. The coronation was that the technology and economics maintained their ruling supremacy over modern culture. The coronation may have been more significant than the relief.
New Year’s Eve was a triumphant moment for the computer chip and information technology. It proved the computer is immortal. Human beings have been looking for the fountain of youth for centuries, and where we have failed, the computer has been victorious. Dot Com was able to compensate for her own shortsightedness, reprogram herself, and more importantly, demonstrate she was worth $1.5 trillion to stay healthy. If only we had been so loved.
The Y2K drama, then, was not just a technical event, it was a watershed cultural event. It affirmed technology’s final, game ending victory as the archetype and symbol of our times.
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