The World War II analogy was popular at San Francisco's Year 2000 conference, where 600 computer programmers, bankers, lawyers, and health-care and utility representatives gathered last month and heard the conference chairman give his "Y2K is the enemy" keynote speech, complete with Nazi imagery.
"This is like a war," says Leon Kappelman, a business computer information systems professor at the University of North Texas who played host for the nation's largest Y2K conference as it toured eight cities this year. "We would be well served by a war effort and its sense of focus, urgency, and directing of resources and rationing. In World War II, we fought for our way of life, and now Y2K threatens a way of life dependent on high technology."
If fear is a part of his pitch, Kappelman focuses on the business of solutions to the Y2K problem, and keeping technological standards intact once the millennium passes. His take on the problem often puts him at odds with others on the lecture circuit who paint the ugliest Y2K scenarios and advocate giving up.
The doomsayers, Kappelman says, make matters worse by turning off enough people by their rhetoric that anyone who brings up credible Y2K issues is dismissed as a nut, which belittles the real situation and leaves the problem to fester.
"The guys heading for the hills tell me I'll have blood on my hands for telling people this is a problem that can be solved," Kappelman says. "But I say there's too much at risk to just walk away and drop out. In this war, they are the deserters and cowards."
The risk Kappelman worries about most -- one far greater than actual computer failure -- is the self-fulfilled prophecy. He warns that if enough people believe Internet financial rumors -- including one that posits computerized savings-account balances will be wiped out as 1999 ends -- ensuing bank runs would create a real financial collapse that has nothing to do with Y2K. (Just in case, the Federal Reserve plans to add $50 billion to cash reserves next year.) Although he pulls no punches when criticizing public utilities for their lack of Y2K compliance, Kappelman makes a point at his conferences to show that the nation's banks are in good shape when it comes to Y2K solutions. It is the least he can do to counter what he charges is a hidden agenda pushed by doomsayers.
"They want to see things fall apart," Kappelman says. "They want democracy and the banking system to fail. They want to see the collapse of society and the start of a Calvinistic one."
All the rhetoric has given Peter de Jager a headache. Famous in Y2K circles, the Toronto-based consultant has built a cottage industry warning people about the world's biggest upcoming computer glitch. In high demand for lectures, he crisscrosses the country, flying to a new city nearly every day. Worn out after fielding a panel discussion in San Francisco, he settles in the hotel bar and orders a pint of Sam Adams.
"I'm tired," de Jager announces as he takes his first sip. "The only people speaking about this are people like me with very little credibility in the grand scheme of things. If Bill Gates or Al Gore [had] started saying something six or seven years ago, we wouldn't be in this mess."
Of course, de Jager -- like many in the Y2K economy -- has made a good living since taking up the cause full time seven years ago.
On a Y2K urgency scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being Armageddon), de Jager says at this late stage he sits somewhere between 5 and 6. He disdains the gun-hoarding fearmongers, but says stockpiling a month's worth of food isn't a bad idea. When confronted with worst-case scenarios -- say, computerized railroad switches that could freeze trains in their tracks -- de Jager believes a can-do, entrepreneurial spirit will prevail.
"It's incredibly frustrating that we had an opportunity to fix this years ago, and now we're talking contingency plans. But even though we were stupid enough to allow things to fail, we're not dumb enough to let them fail forever," he says. "When there's no other choice, you'll get men with a crowbar to move the switches."
And someone who will sell the flashlights that lead Dick Clark home.
