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Y2K, Experts and Citizens

 

 

Jan 10, 2000

 

I've been watching growing criticisms regarding the sloppy expertise of Y2K doomers and prep people. It fascinates me.

Of course, we could dismiss this as the Monday Morning Quarterbacking:  Hindsight is easy -- and weren't our efforts, after all, truly valiant and reasonable, given the intrisic uncertainty of it all?  On the other hand, perhaps we should humbly accept such criticism:  After all, so many of us were more technologically (and otherwise) ignorant and undisciplined than we could have been. 

To me, both those alternatives focus our attention where it is always too ready to go -- to the straight and narrow path of our individual correctness or error -- while overlooking some mammoth issues lumbering around the tarpits on the other side of the meadow, all having to do with the nature of expertise in our collective lives, to wit:

 

a)  EXPERTISE AND INTERCONNECTEDNESS:  Most public problems -- and certainly Y2K -- are so interlinked and interdisciplinary in their causes and effects, that we might reasonably consult computer people, systems analysts, businesspeople, environmentalists, sociologists, economists, ethicists, etc., etc., etc.,....  So, in any given circumstance, we could ask:  What sorts of expertise are needed? - while quietly wondering if there's any expertise that's NOT relevant...

 

b) EXPERTISE AND CITIZENSHIP: THE PERSONAL CHALLENGE:  We tend to think of experts as people who answer questions and resolve issues.  However, our experience is that experts (usually seen in the media, now frequently on the web) just raise more questions -- especially when they disagree with each other.  When faced with competing experts on an important public issue (such as Y2K), what's a citizen to do? 

Sometimes we just shut up, and stop engaging.  Activists like Helen Caldicott call that a cop-out:  After all, they say, we are THE experts on our own lives, our own values, our own needs and understandings and we can jolly well ground ourselves in those things and speak out strongly from there.  We don't have to understand the intricacies of MX missiles to know they're designed to blow up cities; if we don't want cities blown up, we can say that.  Many of us go a bit farther, picking some experts who validate our personal opinions, and sticking with them through thick and thin, often becoming "very informed" on an issue (or at least on our pet expert's ideas and evidence regarding it).  On the other hand, we may pick an expert or group whose values and motivations we trust, and let them form our opinion, since we feel no pressing reason to doubt them.  Some of us ground our ideas in the ideas of a few opinion leaders, but then venture off every now and then into someone else's territory where our thinking gets complexified and nuanced, if not thoroughly confused.  Very few of us do anywhere near the organized, detailed research across the spectrum of disciplines and opinions that would be needed to be called "truly informed" on any issue. 

In this Y2K movement, I've seen us use our diverse online and local networks to inform each other from many perspectives.  But no one would call that mutual education rigorous!  And we usually shared at least SOME blind spots, which it might be interesting to understand better...

 

c)  EXPERTISE AND CITIZENSHIP: THE CHALLENGE TO DEMOCRACY:  We democratic citizens are captains of the ship of state, right?  We are supposed to make the decisions that affect our lives, right? 

Well, things have gotten a bit complicated lately, a bit out of hand....  Aside from the oft-bemoaned take-over of government by wealthy interests and corporations, would we even know what to do with the government if we DID control it?  When you consider the complexity of ANY issue (from youth violence to Y2K), it seems to NECESSARILY involve lots of experts and special interest groups battling on the mountaintops while we citizens swarm around the base trying to see what's going on or going fishing.  This creates a crisis for democracy:  In a society as complex as ours can we even actually HAVE a democracy -- a political order in which we citizens have an effective voice in the decisions that affect our lives?  Really?

Looked at another way, the question itself gets pretty complicated, i.e.,:  What is the proper role of expertise in a society that is supposed to be run by citizens -- especially when that society is so complex that EVERY issue requires multiple threads of expertise to understand -- and particularly when that society is so speedy, infoglutted, and filled with distractions and urgencies that few citizens have time to understand ANYTHING very deeply, let alone carry on any real dialogues with each other about it -- and furthermore, when it is so hard to tell which experts to believe, since they so often disagree and so many are paid by vested interests or are fixated on old paradigms or solutions, or are oblivious to what experts in immediately related fields are saying?

In other words, "forget it!" -- right?  Time to go back to (b) and either shut down entirely or just pick our favorite expert and be done with it!

I prefer to think outside that whole unproductive box.  The solution to the problem is NOT individual; it is systemic.  We need to acknowledge that our society is as different from 18th century America (when our Constitution was written) as 18th century America was from Neanderthal Europe.  This doesn't mean we have to get rid of the democracy we built 200 years ago; it means that we need to change its form or it will simply disappear.  In fact, I think we can safely say we are watching it disappear before our eyes right at this moment, eroding away by the dynamics of expertise, corporate control of media, lobbying, fragmentation, speed, no spaces for public dialogue.... 

Many ways to redesign our democracy for the 21st Century are described on my website at http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_Index.html.

However, the innovation that I think best handles this problem of expertise is the establishment of citizen consensus councils of the sort done in Denmark several times a year and piloted once successfully in the US (see http://www.co-intelligence.org/S-ordinaryfolksLOKA.html ).  A demographically representative (i.e., diverse!) group of citizens are convened as a panel and educated about a technical issue:  They read reports and interview experts from across that issue's spectrum of expert opinion.  When these ordinary citizens have all their questions answered (or have gained sufficient insight into why certain answers won't be forthcoming), they are facilitated to a consensus statement of recommendations for the government and press regarding how that technology should be dealt with in their country.  Since the government convenes these citizen panels, it listens to their recommendations -- and the mass population hears about them in the media and talks about their findings:  After all, here are citizen-experts -- people just like them -- who they can trust! 

This approach to handling complex issues allows a sensible division of roles:  Experts provide understanding of the dynamics, facts and stakes involved; citizens provide the values, every-day issues, and common sense.  The experts are "on tap" to the citizens who, once they're educated, create the policy recommendations.  To me all this makes eminent sense.  Does it make sense to you?  Does it make sense to spread the word?

(Or maybe we should wait a bit longer before telling anyone or doing anything about this.  We might startle folks who woke up one morning to find their democracy actually working...)

 

d) TECHNICAL EXPERTISE AND THE CURVE OF Y2K:  Finally, can we say anything about the various experts we've had in our "Y2K movement," now that we know that the rollover was basically uneventful (except for all the dancing and fireworks)?  Of course, there were people who knew a lot LESS about the problem than we did, who predicted that "nothing would happen." But I'm not about to trade my hard-won knowledge that turned out to be wrong for their ignorant obliviousness that, by chance or grace, turned out to be right.  The question is not whose ignorance was right, but who's insight was right.

So, quite specifically, we might ask:  Among all those competing experts from before the rollover -- the people who knew A LOT about Y2K -- are there any who have all along promoted well-reasoned, believable rationales for a problem-free rollover?  What are they saying now about what lies ahead?  (The interesting question "Why didn't we listen to them rather than to all the others?" is a subset of the previous issues a-c.  The fact is, we ordinary folks never have dependable means to decide who is right until after the fact -- unless we have something like a citizen's technology panel....)

Now, I openly admit that I don't frequent the technical listserves and websites and chat rooms.  So my ability to answer this question is limited.  However, my regular email traffic has exposed me to one interesting nominee for "Y2K expert who got it right so far" who we can use, just as a case in point here -- Dale W. Way, Y2K Chair for The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) <d.way@ieee.org>.  For months he has been posting long and complicated pieces on various forums that, because they weren't taken up by others on the forums, and because I was always pressed for time and had to struggle to understand, I didn't pay much attention to.  But now that some of his well-reasoned predictions have come true, a few people are digging out his old stuff and reposting it and trying to get other Y2K technical experts to address his issues. I've decided to join their ranks.  I've appended below one of Way's more novice-readable pieces, which he posted right after the rollover (thanks: terstec1@webtv.net).  But first I'm going to try the impossible:  to summarize for lay folks some of what I think are his most salient points for the rollover.  (I'll probably mess up, and anyone's free to correct me.  I am encouraged by a quote from my friend Marianne Morgan:  "It is always best to do a thing wrong the first time."  So said Sir William Osler.)

Dale Way suggested that most Y2K problems would arise from math calculations that straddled the centuries.  This means that programs that looked forward would have problems before the rollover; programs that operated in present time (e.g., clocks) would have problems at the rollover; and programs that looked backwards would have problems after the rollover.  Some programs combine these functions, making them vulnerable both before and after rollover. 

He also noted that the longer the period of time included in the calculations typical of that system, the more vulnerable it would be to problems.  In other words, if a typical calculation involves times that are 10 seconds apart, then the window of vulnerability in a forward-looking system would be from 11:59:50pm until midnight New Years Eve; after that, you'd be home free, because all the dates in later calculations would be on the far side of the rollover.  However, if the calculations involved a 30-year period looking both forward and backwards, problems could crop up for years on either side of the rollover.

Way identifies four kinds of system:
1)  physical control system infrastructure (power grids, toxics controls, water systems)
2)  on-line transaction systems (ATMs, check and credit card processing)
3)  support systems (that automatically detect faults, schedule maintenance, order spare parts)
4)  administrative and accounting systems (for purchasing, invoicing, personnel, payroll).

He notes that this list is in descending order of vulnerability and ease of fixing.  The physical control systems tend to be more integrated, robust software/hardware combinations with coherent tasks; are better engineered and stress-tested, and therefore better understood, and usually have redundancies built in; are so clearly vital that they get lots of management attention; and tend to operate with very tiny (seconds to hours) time-windows.  Therefore they are less vulnerable to Y2K glitches which, if they occur, are relatively easy to find and fix.

At the other extreme, the administrative and accounting systems are usually extremely large, complex, repeatedly modified software programs with broad windows of vulnerability (weeks, months or years) -- containing and linked to a vast variety of heterogeneous technologies and data sources which no one really understands, maintains or tests, with little redundancy or management attention -- whose data output is used by other applications all over the enterprise.  Therefore, these complex systems are extremely vulnerable to Y2K glitches which, when they occur, will be very messy and iffy to find and fix.

On-line transaction systems and support systems fall in between the other two in vulnerability and fixability.

Given his analysis, he predicted that the rollover was only really special for systems with short time-windows (i.e., real-time systems, such as physical control systems and on-line transactions).  Since the vital infrastructure systems were also the most resilient (low vulnerability, easy to fix), he was quite sure they wouldn't go down, at least in any significant way.

His last pre-rollover report on Dec 31, 1999 gave this summary:

"Physical control systems and other primary production
systems are not at much risk and not for long, while administrative and
accounting systems in all industries are at great risk for a long time.
Support systems are in the middle, but closer to production systems at
the lower risk end.  If we are to have major damage to the economy and
system infrastructure it will come from administrative and accounting
systems and those dependent on them.  This will have long-term impacts
on the economy, but the shape of those is hard to decipher at this
point.  There is still much we can do by way of adaptation to mitigate
such failures, but if they persist anyway, we are in serious trouble."

What's next?  His January 2 report (below) is entitled:  "The Fat Lady Has Not Yet Sung."  For him, it was easier to predict the rollover than what happens next, and for good reason.  We've moved from the simpler, easy to remediate systems, to the endlessly complex, vulnerable and difficult to repair systems.

I would tend to say this is an expert with some hot expertise.  But, then again, how would I know? All of Dale Way's stuff COULD just be a sensible explanation for the facts I'm fixated on.  Closer examination by some other insider expert with a broader vision could show those explanations to be techno-fantasy, unconnected to some other set of Actual Key Dynamics.  As a non-expert, I am trapped in my ignorance, unwilling to dedicate my next months to understanding the intricacies, unable to find any Guarantees, urgently needing SOMETHING to stand on, to act from...

Where is the forum where such interesting perspectives like this can be explored for their gifts and limitations, where the associated egos and fixed ideas and blind spots can be stripped away so that whatever real knowledge exists can be sorted out and arrayed with the other good knowledge around, so that we can all make some effective sense of what's going on?  Of course, science is supposed to do that, and we have science.  The Internet is supposed to do that and we have the Internet.  The fact that I even have to ask the question shows that the systems we have for dealing with expertise ARE NOT ADEQUATE FOR ORDINARY CITIZENS. 

And if we don't have the capacity, as a society, to translate expertise into knowledge useable by citizens, then what kind of democracy do we have, anyway?

I can't solve any of this personally.  I can offer a tiny corner of a solution, just for us Y2K folks, and not terribly adequate, but it's something.  Here's my suggestion:

If you are a technical expert, feel free to send me a cogent, NOVICE-READABLE commentary on Dale Way's ideas -- or your own -- if you honestly feel you have something that could move us ahead here.  Write "Tech Comment" in the subject line.  If what you write makes sense to me (and I know I'm setting myself up here to get in trouble! - but I do have to protect my list subscribers), I will forward it to my list with "TECH COMMENT" in the subject line so that those not interested in such things can just push the delete key. 

If you think Tom Atlee is arrogant or unqualified to provide such a service, I couldn't agree with you more.  If you offer me a better forum elsewhere I will (with exultant joy) pass the baton in that direction and tell my list where to find it.  I never wanted to get this deep in this subject, anyway.  It just seemed to need handling.

After all, I'm just another well-intentioned novice when it comes to all this tech stuff.... just another citizen praying for a better way than this to handle our collective affairs....  (Maybe someday expertise about how to build a better democracy will be as popular as expertise about computers....)

Coheartedly,

Tom

_ _ _ _ _ _

Subject: IEEE Y2K Chair: The Fat Lady Has Not Yet Sung
Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2000 19:10:19 -0800
From: "Dale W.Way"
To: Roleigh Martin

Roleigh,

You know from my writings over the years that the rollover was being
overblown as the most significant aspect of Y2K, even being made
synonymous with it by many. (Recall my critique of Ed Yourdon's essay "
Y2K End Game" you kindly published on your site.) The "rolloveritis"
that gripped many is understandable in that nothing works like a
deadline in getting people's attention and action. The early
alarm-sounders of Y2K used this, but did not let go of it when
appropriate because they were too often in transmit mode and not enough
in receive mode. And when they were in receive mode, they listened to
themselves too much, with "did you hear!" rumors ricocheting all around
the world. The media also went strongly with this dramatic focus for
obvious reasons.

Then other people with no pretense to computer knowledge entered the
game, often with other agendas lurking beneath the surface. They built
platforms to stand on and decry all the horrible things that were
POSSIBLE with "computer chips" being embedded everywhere. In the absence
of real understanding of the multi-dimensional details (technological,
historical, cultural and managerial) of the world of the physical
control infrastructure, these misguided people did not bother to study
and learn that it takes more than a computer chip (whatever that is) and
a 00-year to make a Y2K error, let alone allow that error to build to a
failure, let alone let that failure emerge into public visibility. The
details have always shown that the PROBABLE in that world was much
smaller and less threatening. This distinction was, to some extent by
choice, beyond their understanding.

The root of the word "science" is "skei-" to cut, split, "to separate
one thing from another," "to discern" (American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd
Edition). The above people, whom I am painting with a broad brush not in
every case justified, failed to discern the various dimensions of Y2K,
one from another, and how those dimensions would combine into a more
predictable reality. They too often lumped Y2K into one thing and
attached their own hopes and fears to that monolithic notion. But there
is another world that Y2K threatens that has gone undifferentiated by
these people and much of the media as well. The Feds and other "powers
that be" have not been so simple-minded. That is why you are seeing
warnings that we are not out of the woods yet, that problems could still
emerge in the near future. The reason is simple:

We are leaving the world of LOW intrinsic vulnerability and HIGH
remediation capability: the physical control system infrastructure --
for one of HIGH intrinsic vulnerability and LOW remediation capability:
the data and information processing infrastructure.

We are going from a world of engineering based on scientific principals
to one of art or craft based on ever-changing business fashions (along
with more stable, but still slowly changing accounting and other
regulatory principals). We are going from one of lean, special-purpose
technology tied tightly to the task it is to do -- to one of
over-featured general-purpose technology adequate to many tasks it could
be asked to do, but not particularly good at any one. We are going from
a world of moderate size and limited interactive complexity -- to one of
immense size and great interactive complexity. We are going from a world
where most systems are very well understood -- to one where holistic
understanding dims after one or two steps away from the element being
examined at any one time. Where a "correct fix" here can bite over
there, because the interdependencies were not understood and the testing
infrastructure and time were inadequate to not only catch it and track
it down, but to devise and retest a completely "safe" fix that would not
bite somewhere else.

I do not know what is going to happen. There is still much human
organizations can do to mitigate and ameliorate errors and failures that
do occur. Much will be held within organizations and not spill out into
any kind of public view. Such things are not necessarily "reportable" in
the crisis-management sense of things. But to the extent they occur they
will likely accumulate, to build up. If our collective ability to
overcome them falls behind that occurrence rate, there will be
disruption and damage, from processing slowdowns, to data loss or
corruption, to serious system lockups. It will take a few months to
really know.

The fat lady has not even walked on the stage yet.

Thank you for listening and posting this to your list.

Dale W. Way Chairman Year 2000 Technical Information Focus Group
Technical Activities Board The Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE)

_ _ _

For more Dale Way writings, <terstec1@webtv.net > says
"You can type IEEE on y2k on a
search engine, www.google.com is the best I have found, and get most of
what he has written."

_ _ _ _

      ************************
   Postscript:  Murphy's Law says that if anything
   can go wrong, it will.  Engineer Rod McDonald
   <rmcdonald@hort.cri.nz> has quipped re the Y2K
   rollover that "Murphy's law applies to Murphy's
   law."  That's certainly an explanation of sorts.... 
      ************************