Why did social scientists miss the bug?

T he Y2K problem (also known as the "Millenium bug") has become an enormously popular topic of concern and discussion. A large number of Web sites, TV programs, newspapers and magazines, and popular books explain how a sensible computer engineering decision during the 1960s (to use the two-digit "YY" year format in order to utilize efficiently scarce computer-memory) has grown into a global nightmare that will descend on us exactly when the clock strikes the year 2,000. Doomsayers claim that nuclear and electric power grids, air traffic control systems, waste treatment facilities, hospital life support systems, and ATM machines will then interpret the new year ("00") as "1900," subtract 1900 from 1999, and conclude that they are about 100-years late for the next maintenance checkup. According to this doomsday scenario, these systems would then shut themselves down and bring our automated world to a quick halt. Mainly in the western world, governments and private sector corporations are in the midst of a spending blitz to fix the "millenium bug" in as many computer systems as possible. But in the developing world, governments and corporations have either woken up too late to tackle this problem or cannot afford to fix it (it is estimated, for example, that fixing Y2K may consume 10% of all of Russia's revenues in 1999) (U.S. News and World Report, May 3, 1999). Their solutions vary from setting computer clocks to 1995 (as one Middle East country has reportedly done) to not flying on New Year's Eve (the Polish national air line, for example) to dusting an ancient abacus (the contingency plan of several Chinese banks) (Virant, 1999). But, since modern national economies are so inter-dependent, even the best-prepared country might suffer tremendous losses after midnight 2,000. Popular reactions to these doomsday scenarios range from apathy to hysteria. For example, several software programmers who are working around the clock to fix the Y2K problem have decided to purchase their own sources of water and electricity, stock up on six to twelve months of food, and move to isolated desert spots (Poulsen, 1998). Despite the severity of the problem, one finds virtually no essays on this topic in leading social science journals. Social scientists continue to entertain the Y2K problem as a one-time phenomenon that does not merit serious scholarly discussion. I argue in the first part of this article that the millenium bug and the global response it has generated can serve as a powerful launching pad for discussions of important philosophical, ethical, and social theories. I demonstrate this argument by discussing the potential relationship between Y2K and social sciences topics in four different fields: the role of misfortune vs. injustice in social affairs (political philosophy), the dilemma of "dirt on many hands" (organizational theory), the cultural fault lines of nations (sociology), and the design of effective organizational information systems (business and management). These four examples, I argue, merely illustrate the potential of the millenium bug to shed new light on old problems. I seek to spark the interest of other scholars, thus encouraging them to reflect on the potential relationships between Y2K and the dominant theories in their fields. In the concluding section of the article, I raise several hypotheses to explain why social scientists have opted not to address the Y2K event seriously. Regrettably, I argue, social scientists continue to think that technology is not theirs to study. However, I propose that in our increasingly technological era, technological disasters such as Y2K can be as important as the fall of Rome was for the residents of the empire in the 4 ~h century A.D. Furthermore, from the perspective of the social scientist, the main event (i.e., humanity slowly coming to grips with Y2K and attempting to tackle the problem) has already materialized and therefore its social analysis is not dependent on whether the doomsday Y2K scenario becomes a reality or not.