>Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 17:33:36
>-0700
>from Kyle Holbrock
><worldonfire@hotmail.com>
>via a.d. *thanx*
>Please repost and distribute the following:
>Destroy Market Capitalism In Six Easy Steps
The Year 2000 For Revolutionaries
>* Introduction
>The present society produces an ever-increasing series of disasters, from stock market crashes to mass starvation. Most of this chaos winds up hurting the most dispossessed with the capitalists laughing all the way to the bank. Knowing this, as a revolutionary and professional programmer, I want to outline why the man will actually get hit by the particular crisis known as the "year 2000 problem" or "Y2K" problem. The historical irony of this "small technical problem" is that it shows how much more power the computer has over peoples lives than any of the democratic choices offered to Americans or any other decision supposedly influenced by voters. Because the production system's serious machinery must be programmed to very quickly heed the absolute orders of the world market, this programming has more real power than the screams of media shills or the ideologies cooked up by politicians.
>* This matters
>Modern bureaucracy organizes existence so as to make it's citizens live as children dependent on systems they barely understand. Most people don't know where their water, electricity, gas or food come from. Most people don't understand credit systems, tax systems, or telephone systems even as they depend on them. All these are managed by mega-capitalist interests often closely tied to the government. And as the products of vast bureaucracies, each of these systems is vulnerable to computer failure on the year 2000.
>The IRS has admitted that it's computers will not function during the entire period of AD 2000. The FAA conducted a test of air traffic control computers. When the date was set to Jan, 2000 AD, all screens went blank. Many, many other "problems" are scattered around the critical infrastructure of world capitalism.
>* The secret life of programmers
>Y2K starts from a situation that is both simple and shows the irrationality of those running the present world. (Most discussions of Y2K talk about programming "the way it used to be." We'll be talking about programming as it is now because things really haven't changed that much.)
>Programs are not written by bosses and the boss don't usually know any details about programs. Programs are written by computer programmers - "high-paid information professionals" (making 60K - 120K/per year). While computer programmers have a certain glamour and salaries about four times the average, their condition of work is ultimately that of other laborers - constant toil to maintain their existence. And the logic of the programmers' bosses, like all bosses, is to scrimp as much on programming labor as possible so as to fatten their profits next month.
>In the larger world of work, the bosses work by removing as much decision-making power as possible from their workers and putting it in the hands of their computers. They constantly attempt to reduce workers to low-paid, replacable part. Cashiers or bank-clerks become just data inputs for computers. And work stops when the computers go down. But by the logic that bosses use to try to remove skills from the workers below them and give it to the computer programs, bosses work to remove skill from the work of the programmers and pretend that their bureaucratic orders control the process.<1> Indeed, creating and impossing mindless orders is the job of all bureaucracies. And so a bureaucracy can never allow it's orders to be influenced by the details of how these orders will be carried out - that for the peons.
>This way, computer programming must be treated identically to ditch digging. All bureaucratic importance is concentrated in the man who says "dig here" or "program this" and none in those who actually do the action.
>Altogether this process works out to bosses demanding that the programs on which all else depends must be constructed as haphazardly as possible while still satisfying their basic function. (Indeed, 60% of computer programs "fail" - they are cancelled due to being too little and too late.)
>The de-skilled computer programmer programs with random methods. Each time a programmer tells a computer what to do, method of doing things (the "code") is arived at by the seat of the programmer's pants. This is akin to a carpenter making a house by grabbing boards and hammering them together at random until they form a rough house-shape. This adds up to the world of today; more and more of life is controlled by absurd, irrational computer programs written in the quickest, most half-assed way possible.
>>From absurd check-out lines to failing satellites to wait-forever phone
>systems, the hapzard results naturally only satisfy the owners since they profit by them rather than experiancing them.
>* The Future of An Illusion
>Computers are used for both crucial and unimportant tasks. The Computers that control the key processes of capitalism are the one where the important action will take place. From banks to oil rigs to nuclear missles to supermarkets to factories to electric utilities, most large, complex systems today absolutely need computers to run or help run their operations.
>Now nearly any computer program that controls something must use time to keep track of how that thing changes. Therefore many of these program must also use dates. A factor control system must keep track of the day of the week for workers' shifts as well as the date of the month to consider shipments.
>Keep in mind that the rules for dates and times only seem simple. From leap-year to "thirty days hath September...", the rules are fairly complicated.
>The rub comes when realize that even the most important computer operation used the same haphazard methods to produce their programs<2>. Naturally, in the "get it done now" world of programming, being sure about the rules for dates was often thrown out with every other tricky and time-consuming activity. Like McDonald's, all that matters is giving the customer his lump of slop quickly enough. Thus in a vast number of computer programs produced over the last thirty years, the logic around dates was created according to just the rough idea the programmer had of how dates work. And these programs only had to work for the next week or year.
>* The crucial details
>This especially openned the door for key kind of error - the Year 2000 error. Year 2000 computer errors are simply those pieces of "code" that incorrectly handle the change of the year 1999 to the year 2000. This follows the natural way most people operate. Most people just use the last two digits of the four digit year - Jan 12th 99. This nearly always works.
>But think about a computer program operating the same way: * A bank may calculate a year of interest by subtracting the next year from the previous year. A simple approach. * It subtracts 97 from 98, getting 1 year of interest. It then increases the account by 10%.
>* It subtracts 98 from 99, getting 1 year of interest. It then increases the account by 10%.
>* But when the same program subtracts 99 from 00, this program gets -99 years or some other incorrect result meaning -99 years of interest - the acount is set to zero.
>The year value is like the highest number on an odometer. It appears as part of the formula for how electrical current is adjusted in a power plant, how oil is pumped and in any program that uses the exact time. If the year counter is wildly off, the full calculation will be wildly off. The error of leaving off the last digit of a year is fairly simple. Yet this kind of error appears over and over again in different forms just from laziness and because it works fine now.
>* The Illusion of A Future
>Any small error is not a small problem for a computer's operations. Computers can't figure their way out of the simplest error if they haven't been programmed for it. Instead, they will stop completely or behave unpredictably. (This is different from inaccurate data, which some programs can recover from).
>Programs often make some errors in their logic ("have bugs"). Many companies have "testing departments" to find bugs in programs once the program has been written. This does make sure the program usually does what it's supposed to do. But consider that if the program needs to be tested just to see if it does what the programmer intended it to do, this means that no one can know for sure what a program will always do. It means that once-in-a-while what the program does is anyone's guess. The bugs are out there. The complexity of programs might make bugs inevitable - computer programs are the most complex objects constructed by humans. But certainly, in this world of just throwing shit out, many, many bugs wind up being dealt with by the hapless users of every sort of system. Indeed, as computer programs become the controlling factor in large enterprises, working around the "quirks" of a system becomes just part of everyone's job.
>Breakdown
>Bugs appear most often in computer systems when the system encounters a new situation - something that hasn't been tested for or thought of. This is always happening somewhere - phone failures, electrical power failures, cash registers going out and other less visible things are just part of daily existence - like traffic jams. Indeed, nearly every large computer system is kept together today by just a few "Mr. Scots" who've figured out how to make the anti-matter not collide with the matter (to use the analogy of Star Trek). These are the "Fire-fighters" who can take system back from the brink. Year 2000 errors are different. Unlike the constant stream of errors that systems shrug off today, the special property of time is that all of the year 2000 time bugs will appear at nearly the same time. When the clock strikes twelve in every digital alley, the machines dutifully turn all their counters and then once again run their half-assed programming to decide what this means. But the rulers cheated on the few extra counters.
>So every computer in the world will face a new situation at the same time. So an uncountable number of bugs will appear in predictable and unpredictable places, over-whelming the fire-fighters who normally take care of them. The mediocre time of capitalism will have collided head-on with complex time of organic reality.
>This adds up to a bug in the world-system. Interest on -99 years means bank accounts reduced to nothing. When enough complex systems are in the condition of not working, they start to interfere with all the other system. Without transport, many machines break down. Without telephones, fixing broken machines gets harder. If electricity fails, many buildings are unuseable. If buildings are unusuable, the programs can't be fixed. If card-key security features fail, emergency personel can't get into headquarters to fight the other problems. And many, many other things happen next.
>* And why it is has to be that way
>So this sword is pointed straight at the heartless heart of the man. Yes, but one might imagine that while Y2K looks bad, capital will find a way to pull out from this tailspin. This is harder than it seems - in fact, it is impossible.
>Today capital runs on a series of mediocre yet complex programs. And by their original construction, the way these programs use dates is mashed in with all of their other operations to the point where it can only be unravelled by much time and thought.
>To escape Y2K, all these programs must be inspected and many, many rewritten. A given company calls its efforts to do this its "year 2000 project." These projects are managed like all the other computer projects that have gone before them.
>The first discovery of any computer expert is that throwing more people and more money at a given project makes no difference in the time it takes to finish that particular project. Like a math theorem, no amount of money or preasure by itself guarantees that a complex computer problem will be solved. Time and experiance are the key ingredients needed but these are exactly the resources that bosses refuse to allow programmers (or any workers for that matter). With this reality, the managers of programming have never had an incentive to plan realistically but instead used their "planning functions" as a whips to force programmers to work faster. Any missed deadline could always be blamed on the programmers. Moreover, by their bureaucratic logic, capital's bosses created and organized their year 2000 projects on the usual logic of believing their own lies. The first princeple of management, as we've said, is that you need no understanding of the processes and methods your underlings do. Since it is a problem in the way things are done, for a long time Y2K could not exist in the world of management. The big bosses (senior managers) would say "that's matter for the technical people to solve." And the technical managers haplessly awaited orders and funding from the big bosses.
>Y2K became more visible when management was moved to act by consultants pushing visions of doom (it finally picked-up steam in 1997). Management was only capable of discovering that it's orders could not determine reality at the point where the reality of things being too late was forced on them.
>And even this late action is still only within the world of bureaucracy. It has only a marginal relationship to the nuts and bolts of how each program works (which are indeed, hellishly complex). In Y2K programs, managers naturally have shaved deadlines, outsourced, demanded endless reports and used every standard strategy that has worked fine for exploiting people's labor but which has failed to produce quality computer programs.
>Thus the average year 2000 project is even less effective than the normal, often-doomed computer project. Today, it's simply too late to fix many, probably most, year 2000 problems. Unlike other projects which can be postponed, Y2K projects come due soon, far too soon for many to be solvable by any means what-so-ever.
>* Chips Ahoy
>It's important to also realize that the year 2000 isn't just about computers. Many "embedded chips" have the same problems. Embedded chips are silicon chips which are used to control most complicated machinery today. These have programs written directly in the silicon that often rely on the time and so also on the date. And these programs have Y2K problems for the same reason that other programs have them. These programs cannot be looked at. These programs cannot be changed without pulling out the chip and putting in a new one. And generally that means buying an entire new machine or using an unpredictable "work around" for the problem.
>But just finding which machines have Y2K problems is as complex as finding them in computers. From electrical power to water to food distribution to smelting plants, many large industrial enterprises have their pants down on this one.
>More could be said but this sketches the picture. The center cannot hold, anarchy will reign.
>The possibilities
>Today is not a period of "great prosperity" but a time when vast bubbles of speculation are manipulated by banks to maintain a fragile economy. This could best be seen in Fall of 1997 when the world's stock markets together lost 25% of their value.
>The present management of capital already faces problems like the spontaneous insurrection in Indonesia (the world's seventh largest nation in population).
>Revolutionary moments, where the proletariat had a serious opportunity to create a world beyond the present world of capital, have virtually all come in periods of considerable uncertainty and crisis for capital. These might be crises of managing the state or crises of the economy. The Paris Commune, The Russian Revolution, The Spanish Revolution, May of 68 in France, The "Unknown Insurrection" in Iraq after the Gulf War and other muddier situations are all examples of this. Y2K will be such a moment of chaos, confusion and indecision for the capitalist class. (This will naturally roll into the general level of uncertainty about the passage to the next millennium). Rather than proving that it has solved it's problems, capital will show that it has combined it's many problems into a single, unsolvable mess. What could happen
>We cannot predict exactly how much of a disaster the year 2000 will be. We do predict disaster, in general, because we know a machine generally stops working when a single part is removed. And many, many parts will be removed on Jan 1, 2000.
>Electrical power, water, food, telephones, banks, the stock market, the oil industry, large factories, air traffic control, large corporate and governmental bureaucracies are the most likely and critical points we expect will shut down for various periods. Some, like the IRS, have already said that, with dead certainty, they will be dead in the water come 2000. Many others are hiding their troubles for fear of planned lawsuits (which won't matter much without food or water but that's bureaucracy for you).
>Thus, the highly probably outcome of this will be a nation wide crisis on the order of each city being hit by an earth quake combined with 75% of the workforce being fired.
>FEMA and other dictatorial government agencies are quite likely dusting off their plans for martial law - originally planned for after a nuclear war (of course the Internet was also planned to survive a nuclear war but won't last long without phone lines).
>* What we can do
>The Chinese symbol for crisis combines danger and opportunity. For those of us who imagine a new world, built on a human scale for human needs and desires, this may be a great opportunity. If the dispossessed accept the orders of this society of crisis management, it will only mean a horrific acceleration of the present horrors and dictatorship of money. If not, they can begin to create the world they desire.
>Revolutionaries must begin now to create the consciousness and the bare possibilities for a revolutionary nucleus around the year 2000. There is no need for a single centralized command. Rather, we must consider a spectrum of related activities.
>One key point is that many people will wind up mobilized, acting to keep society and basic services together on a temporary basis (water, electricity, food etc.). We must leverage this to spread the explicit political program of working and poor people self-consciously controlling society on a permanent basis. Another key point is that many people are both oppressed and dependent on computerized control of their lives. These are "mundane" thing like credit history, welfare controls, traffic records, and others. The possibility of these things either ending or becoming worse should be communicated effectively.
>Some measures that people can take are; 1) Store several month supply of food and water - an electrical generator or solar cells are other possibilities. Consider you particular situation.
>2) Get to know your neighbors, tell them about the year 2000 problem and discuss actions around the various disaster scenarios. 3) Consider that there may well be the equivalent of martial law in your neighborhood in a little more than a year. How could you fight that politically.
>4) Spread the idea of a debt moratorium on the year 2000. Do not pay credit card bills or mortgages on the year 2000. Take your money out of the bank at least seven months both Jan 1, 2000. Urge others to do this. 5) Consider what steps you can take to spread political propaganda. One likely situation is where groups of average people are keeping the bare functions needed for life in the cities running and the government is moving to establish official control over this autonomous action. Consider that we must propagandize to make autonomous organization by necessity into autonomous organization by choice and desire. There is no guarantee that these ideas will appear by themselves though we expect some will.
>6) Communicate with others about this situation. Open as many channels of communication as possible to avoid a single one being closed.
>Learn now and then act on the possibilities of Y2K yourself in the particular directions that seems most important. Capitalism produces idiots who cannot act unless they have ideas and instructions handed to them. This give us considerable leverage if we escape from being those idiots.
>Certainly, many proletarian will be acting at the point they have opportunity. But there is no reason to hide the insight that this is a result of global capitalism under a rock. Shine this light now.
>Kyle Holbrock
><worldonfire@hotmail.com>
>PO Box 3305
>Oakland, CA 94609, USA
>Notes:
>1 Bosses talk about schemes like " structured programming," "object oriented programming", "patterns", or other schemes. But these fail to make programming better since like any automation, they are sold as allowing programming to be done faster and with less skill. Thus the problem of haphazard logic within the code of programmers remains the same or worse.
>2 Some operations, like on-board aircraft control, did use methods to test thoroughly that the programs worked. But these methods, again, didn't improve code quality. See the section "Why this has to be" for more details.
>------------------------------------------------
>Peace!
>Rob, Sector Air Raid Warden at Rob's Place
>/RENEGADE/ newsletter: http://fornits.com/renegade/ DEDICATED TO SPIRIT, TRUTH, PEACE, JUSTICE, AND FREEDOM
>Rob's Place: http://www.vom.com/rc/home.htm Chat: http://jupiter.beseen.com/chat/rooms/i/1055/
>Robert Cherwink <rc@vom.com>
>Usenet: alt.thebird
>WHEN SPIDERS UNITE, THEY CAN TIE DOWN A LION --Ethiopian Proverb
>Rob's Place | CHAT | /RENEGADE/: Main | Search Archive | Search Newer
>Articles | INDEX OF ARTICLES | Top of
>Page
>The /RENEGADE/ article server is hosted by fornits.com.
mark@cruzio.com
"Peace comes of communication."-- Ezra Pound "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press..." -- Anon
"To live effectively is to live with adequate information"-- Norbert Weiner
Original file name: y2kkkkkkkk
This file was converted with TextToHTML - (c) Logic n.v.