Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA29076 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 6 Jan 2000 19:21:54 GMT Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.20000106132008.0104636c@popmail.mcs.net> X-Sender: aaron@popmail.mcs.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 13:20:08 -0600 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: Re: Memetics archive hit by Y2K bug! In-Reply-To: <3874A3E6.2C2F17A3@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 02:17 PM 1/6/00 +0000, Bruce Edmonds wrote:
>Dear Colleagues,
>
>Stories about the Y2K bug were not just a meme but (sometimes) true.
>
>As a result of this bug a few posts have been missed from the archive.
>Also, to celebrate the new millenium I have seperated the archive into
>pre- and post-millenial sections.
>
>Posts archived from now (including if it works this one) will land up in
>the archive at:
>
> http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/~majordom/memetics/2000
>
>Regards.
Hi Bruce.
I'm not sure how many memeticists were actually calling the whole Y2K thing
"just a meme." My own take on this is that of "2 bugs": one in certain
date-sensitive classes of computer software, and one in millennialist forms
of cultural "software."
Shortly after my _Skeptical Inquirer_ piece came out in November, Peter de
Jager wrote to congratulate me for the article invite me to publish a
version at year2000.com. Certainly, he would have been about the last
person in the world to do this if the article took a dismissive attitude
toward the real century rollover software problems that needed fixing and
testing or at least checking. For some systems, reducing risk from one in a
thousand to one in a million was worth the trouble. (De Jager was the Y2K
expert who flew from Chicago to London on January 0, and who brought Y2K to
mainstream attention starting with a 1993 ComputerWorld article.) The
year2000.com version of my 1999 article
<http://www.year2000.com/archive/NFthought.html> has a few differences from
the Skeptical Inquirer version. For instance, year2000.com dropped the
footnotes, which cited Dawkins, Lynch, Blackmore, and Lacayo. A few wording
differences are also in the body of the text.
Some of the wildest assertions that spread in 1998 do, however, seem to be
proving themselves false. These include claims that Y2K was so big and so
insidious that it was "definitely too late" to fix, and that therefore the
only answer was massive preparation for the collapse of civilization.
Anyway, thanks for cleaning up the archive mess that resulted from the
century rollover problem.
--Aaron Lynch
>
>--------------------------------------------------
>Bruce Edmonds,
>Centre for Policy Modelling,
>Manchester Metropolitan University, Aytoun Bldg.,
>Aytoun St., Manchester, M1 3GH. UK.
>Tel: +44 161 247 6479 Fax: +44 161 247 6802
>http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/~bruce
>
>===============================================================
>This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
>Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
>For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
>see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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