Two‐Thousand‐N: An IT Odyssey

Over the past few years, incidents and accidents that resulted directly from information technology failures have been noticed only by a small circle of analysts. Whatever the outcome when the clock strikes the first second of the year 2000, the Y2K ‘crisis’ has brought to general attention the vulnerabilities and dependencies of large, complex technical systems that depend largely, or in some cases entirely, on computers and networks for their operation. Moreover, the transition has only just begun. Over the next few years, many other industries, markets, bureaus, and regulatory and safety systems will transform their mode of operation to large, integrated systemic dependencies on IT; others will become increasingly dependent upon the reliable performance of other IT systems such as global positioning satellites or the Internet over which they have at best limited control. Where such operations are safety critical, as they are for air traffic control, economically critical, as they are for international financial transactions, individually critical, as they are for hospital and biomedical systems, or, finally, critical for those agencies and institutions whose primary goal is intervention, mitigation, or crisis management, surprises can be rapid, extensive, and interconnected to a degree that will in itself be surprising. This article uses some historical cases to explore the possible range of future crises and contingencies that might ensue.