Saturday, April 24, 1999
Y2K highlights our dependence
UC conference examines 2000
BY MICHAEL D. CLARK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Fear of the next millennium's Y2K problems isn't so much about what may go wrong with our technology but rather our shock over how technologically dependent we've become.
“The real fear is not what may happen to us, but what has already happened to us,” professor and millennium expert Mark Kingwell said Friday during a University of Cincinnati conference examining the year 2000.
“Doubling unsettling is the realization that our lives depend on technology,” Mr. Kingwell, author of Dreams of the Millennium: Report from a Culture on the Brink,said of Y2K fears about computer failures once 2000 arrives.
“Fear of computer chaos is really fear of the Frankensteins we have created,” said Mr. Kingwell, who is also the director of the Center for Advanced Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Toronto at Scarborough.
Mulling the millennium at the conference were two historians, a philosopher and a medieval gender expert. The one-day conference at UC's Max Kade Center drew more than 50 students, faculty and public.
The conference was part of a yearlong project by a multidisciplinary group of UC professors investigating millennial manifestations from their respective academic areas.
Befitting the forum, the expansive subject of the millennium was examined from angles ranging from revisionist lesbian history of medieval society of the first millennium to global marketing strategies keyed to the coming millennium.
“This is a subject that goes across disciplines,” said James Murray, UC associate professor of history and conference organizer.
With Western cultures approaching the year 2000, Mr. Murray said scholars are going through the same millennial introspection as nonacademicians.
Professor Kingwell said many bring to the year 2000 a “complex web of fears and desires ... that cling to this point in time.”
He acknowledges that one minute after Dec. 31 will not mark the beginning of a new millennium — the next century does not begin until 2001. And he also acknowledges that such calendar accuracy doesn't matter at all to the public.
“The millennium is not beholden to mathematics or logic. There are more than 1,500 cults that believe the world will end next year. And even though the calendar is socially constructed, it now has real power,” Mr. Kingwell said.
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