Power Fantasies
The strange appeal of the Y2K bug.
Reason , April 1999
Wouldn't it be great if civilization as we know it collapsed? A lot of people seem to think so. The Y2K bug has become the latest hope for many people with a grievance against contemporary society--and not just the head-for-the-hills survivalists. The problem is real enough, of course, and computer and embedded-chip users are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to make sure that when the calendar turns to 2000, their machines don't think it's the year 1900 and crash. But in the minds of many, the computer glitch isn't just a technical problem. It's a vehicle for reimagining, and potentially remaking, the world