The Year 2001 problem: March 30, 1998 issue of New Thinking

March 30, 1998 New Thinking:
The Year 2001 problem

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March 30, 1998

The Year 2001 problem

By Gerry McGovern

The solution to the Year 2001 problem involves changing the clock in the brain.

It was the Year 2001 problem that caused the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem. Back in ancient times (the 1950/60s), people could not imagine a year beginning with ’20.’ Programmers, seeking to save valuable memory, wrote ‘66’ instead of 1966. All well and good in the 20th Century. However, when 2000 arrives, unless the computers with the Y2K problem are fixed, they will think they’ve arrived at 1900.

This simple mistake, which is taking untold millions to fix, is a reflection of what I would like to call the ‘Year 2001 Problem.’ The new millennium may arrive, but many of us will continue to live in the old one.

Some reading this will ask: What millennium? If you are in China or the Middle East, there is no new millennium up ahead. True. However, this arbitrary new century and new millennium does in fact hail and signal a new age – the digital age.

The digital age may in fact have emerged with the invention of the computer in the 1940s. It truly began to hit home in the 1980s with the development of the PC. It entered public consciousness with the popularization of the World Wide Web in the 1990s.

It is a coincidence, certainly, but the millennium - in the West anyhow – becomes a focus and icon for the digital age and all its implications.

The world is changing faster than our sense of time can measure. Our minds – particularly those of older generations – are going increasingly slow. We need to change the clock in our brain. We need to switch from a mechanical Industrial Age device to a digital age time-keeper.

And with our new perspective on time we need also a new perspective on thinking. We need to learn how to learn again. We need to rekindle our sense of the inquisitive. We need to re-open the doors of the imagination. We need to start from a position that everything we know is wrong.

Are you afraid?

You have every right to be. Because if you feel no fear about this need for change, then either you are very, very lucky, or else you do not understand the true extent of the change involved.

Are you paralyzed by fear?

You should not be. Unless your mechanical clock is so embedded and rusted in your head, this rapid change can be managed. In the whirlwind of happenings, keep in mind that when everything settles, although things will have been moved about incredibly, the fundamentals will still remain basically the same.

We are humans. We live and die by communication and relationships. We will show as much love, fear, ambition, greed and generosity in the digital age as we have shown in the Industrial Age. The expression of these needs, wants and desires may be somewhat different, but the human core will remain the same for quite a while yet.

As I have said before, the future is not about opening mines. The future is about opening minds. We need 2001 thinking. And beyond (of course).

Gerry McGovern

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In the whirlwind of happenings, when everything settles, the fundamentals will still remain basically the same.