The year 2000 is coming. Is the end near?

Not just yet, say an assortment of Harvard faculty queried on the coming millennial milepost.

To some, the turning of the millennium is just a date change though one they're watching with curiosity. To others, the times pulse with poetic energy and are marked by the frenzied efforts of software experts scurrying to protect our computerized infrastructure.

Right or wrong, some religiously-minded people are preparing for Something Big, and historians are watching with an eye for comparisons to the last similar change, 1,000 years ago.

Technically speaking, the main threat at the millennial change is the Year 2000, or Y2K, computer bug. The Y2K bug is a glitch in software caused by programmers using just two digits to denote the year. That shorthand a hand-me-down from the days when computer memory was scarce has the potential to confuse computers into assuming that the new year will usher in 1900, rather than 2000.

Round numbers particularly large round numbers like 2000 have a certain undeniable mystique. That mystique penetrates even Harvard's hallowed halls and touches those that teach here. Here are their thoughts:

Curiosity and Caution

"I find it remarkable and curiously satisfying that we're facing a problem with the potential to cause major calamity around the world and yet the Y2K predicament is so transparent I can easily explain it to my 9-year-old and she understands it very well," said Henry Leitner, senior lecturer on computer science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and director of information technology in the Division of Continuing Education.

 

Henry Leitner

Leitner, who in April brought Y2K software engineering expert Ed Yourdon to talk to his Introduction to Computer Science II class, CS-51, said he's very curious about what the new year will bring.

Leitner said he expects the computer bug which he feels is better described as a design flaw or an "engineering tradeoff"

will cause some kind of disruption.

"I haven't quite made up my mind on how severe the disruptions are likely to be," Leitner said. "What concerns me is the size of the problem. In the so-called developed world in which we live there are an estimated 700 billion lines of code in 500 different programming languages." Part of the problem, Leitner said, is that many of those programming languages are no longer used today and the people who wrote the codes are out of the workforce.

"Even that may not be the most serious aspect," Leitner said. "There are embedded processors everywhere. Worldwide, there are billions, on the tips of oil drilling equipment, on top of nuclear missiles."

Leitner said the problem of embedded chips computer chips incorporated into equipment ranging from household appliances to automobiles may be even more serious than the software problem.

Leitner said he believes the deciding factor as to whether the Y2K problem becomes a "calamity" will be the impact it has on the power supply. If the power goes out, affecting broad areas of society, from water pumping stations to telephone equipment, the impact could be severe, he said.

Another concern is the impact the Y2K bug will have internationally. With today's global economy, Leitner said, computer problems could have an impact here even if there is little or no impact of the Y2K bug in the United States.

"The systems have gotten so big and complex that we can't simulate what will happen," Leitner said.

As for his personal preparations, Leitner said he's toying with the idea of going on vacation because if he's going to be stranded, it might as well be in an exotic location, like Hawaii. Then again, he said, Hawaii has much of its food imported and if there's trouble with that. . . .

A Poetic Renaissance

"I think that in terms of poetry, this is a very special moment," said Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value.

Scarry, who edited a 1995 book, Fins de Siecle, which examines poetry at the turns of the last several centuries, believes the end of a century and the approach of a new one inspires poets to great heights. Consciously or unconsciously, she said, there is an energy at the turns of centuries that is reflected in poetic writings.

Scarry said a surprising number of history's great poets did some of their most important work in the final decade of a century. Wordsworth wrote the Lyrical Ballads in the 1790s, Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales in the 1390s, Dante wrote La Vita Nuova, in the 1290s and dated the Divine Comedy in the year 1300, and Shakespeare wrote 22 of his plays in the 1590s.

 

Elaine Scarry

"At the end of a century, there's a feeling of wanting to make things better," Scarry said. "Poets try to give us new language, to revivify language."

Scarry, who was on leave this spring at the Getty Center in California, said the poetry scene in Boston today is energized.

"All I know is there's a kind of pulse at poetry readings," Scarry said.

Another element energizing the times, Scarry said, is the fact that at the stroke of midnight, the population will be facing a historical clean slate, a new century on which to make their mark.

"That's why there's this engaging of the will and this desire to rise to what's best in us," Scarry said.

As for why the time is important, Scarry said numbers have always been important to people. Think of the importance attached to birthdays when a person turns 20, 30, 40 or another round number, or even the significance of a car's odometer turning over to 100,000. Poets, she said, are always thinking numerically in rhythm and line count.

"They care more about numbers because their poetry whatever else it is is an act of counting and marking words," Scarry said.

Scarry acknowledged that it might just be her perception that poetry and poets take on added significance at the turn of the century. But she also said thinking about something is the first step toward making it real, particularly in times energized by an approaching milestone.

"The line between wishful thinking and reality is a blurred one at the end of centuries," Scarry said.

Cults and Computer Bugs

"From a religious point of view, I see no greater significance in that date change than any other change of date," said Paul Hanson, Florence Corliss Lamont Professor of Divinity. "I do not believe in a god who wants planes to crash."

 

Paul Hanson

That's not to say Hanson doesn't believe in the Y2K computer bug. But Hanson rejects any assertions that a technical, computer-software problem is related to religion or to a coming apocalypse.

The world's major religions agree, Hanson said none is predicting the end of the world, a second coming, or anything more dramatic, religiously, than the passing of another day.

Hanson acknowledges, however, that that does not mean that no religious group or religiously minded person is thinking apocalyptically. It's the potential for trouble by those small, determined groups that alarms Hanson.

"If you have people perceiving significance, they can cause things to happen," Hanson said. "Some radical Christian and Jewish millennialist groups view 2000 as a very significant date in a messianic timetable and consequently they are descending on Jerusalem. If people believe the temple must be rebuilt for the messiah to come and they attempt to destroy the holy Islamic shrines of al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock to clear the way, it could be disastrous. It's such a tinderbox."

Hanson, who is Master of Winthrop House, said he doesn't mind if survivalists head for the hills, as long as they don't stockpile guns.

"They'll alarm me if they come out of the hills and attack Winthrop House to seize our larder," Hanson said.

Saving Space

 

Harry Lewis

"Any of us who are in our 50s in the computer field are old enough to have written lots of code where if you could use two bytes instead of four bytes, you'd do it in a minute," said Harry Lewis, Dean of Harvard College and Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science. "I don't think 30 years ago that anyone was writing code that they thought would still be around today."

Lewis said he thinks the Y2K computer bug will be worse internationally than in the United States.

"I have a sense that most of the critical systems [in the U.S.] will remain functional and I'm personally proceeding on that assumption," Lewis said.

Lewis agrees with Leitner that the wild card in the equation is the so-called "embedded chips," which are computer chips in devices that many people aren't even aware are computerized. How they will function or malfunction after the new year, is still a bit of a guessing game, Lewis said.

"That's something that I don't think many people anticipated," Lewis said.

Party Like it's 1999

"It has the ironic effect of causing a lot of meetings," Professor of Government and of Sociology Theda Skocpol said of the Y2K computer bug. Skocpol said it's not surprising that people are getting excited about the millennial change because that's what people do when significant watershed events are looming.

"There's a natural tendency to mark these big watersheds in history with some kind of obsession and [the Y2K computer bug] is the one for this millennium," Skocpol said. "People tend to do more of what they do already. The people stockpiling food were probably survivalists already."

 

Theda Skoclpol

Skocpol said she doesn't plan to be flying on New Year's Eve, but not out of fear the plane will crash.

"I don't expect to be on an airplane on New Year's Eve, but I'm never on a plane on New Year's Eve," Skocpol said.

She does expect to break with tradition a bit this year and see the new year in.

"I think what I'll do different is stay up this year. I'll probably stay up to party," Skocpol said.

Anticlimactic Apocalypse?

If history is our guide, history is no guide where the turns of millennia are concerned, according to McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History Steven Ozment.

Unlike the much-heralded end of the second millennium, the first millennium ended with a whimper, Ozment said. That historical view contradicts a popular modern perception that people in the year 999 were fearful of the end of the world.

"I think a lot of things in the year 1000 have been grossly exaggerated. One thing we have that they didn't is an electronic media to whip people up. Very few people were aware of [the coming of the year 1000]," Ozment said.

In 1000, illiterate farmers living in rural areas made up most of the population, Ozment said, meaning that the end of the first millennium was noticed by an educated few living in urban areas.

 

Steven Ozment

The relative peace of the times was another factor in the lack of razzle-dazzle at that first turn of the millennium, Ozment said. Much more excitement was generated a few centuries later, when the bubonic plague ravaged Europe and got people seriously thinking the end of the world was near.

Ozment said he thinks even the current Year 2000 hype is exaggerated and questions how deeply most people feel threatened or even interested.

"The occasion on which I most often hear the word `apocalyptic' uttered is when I say something resonable in a faculty meeting," Ozment said.

Still, Ozment said, it's possible our society has become too self-preoccupied and could benefit from the shakeup that an attention-grabbing crisis would generate.

"It's an unusual experience for us well-off Americans to have on the horizon something that could really hurt us," Ozment said. "There is a positive side to it. It is shaking up a hubristic sense of self-content that people need to have shaken up now and then."