Now "assembler", as it was called, was one step above machine language programming. Computers are just machines, after all, and all they do is read the logic of a pattern of off and on spots in an array of electric circuits. In the mid-1960's, we programmed for the most part in "assembler", which was a language that grouped ones and zeroes, so it would be easier for us, as people, to understand.

It would take a couple hundred lines of code before you got a pot of coffee out of it.

Now obviously, this was too tedious a language and a procedure to do the kind of programming tasks we came to ask of our programmers, and so "Higher Order Languages" like Fortran and Cobol and Basic and APL and PL1 were developed. These Higher Order Languages did the same thing to Assembler that Assembler did to Machine Language. That is, they grouped together lines of code so that people would be better able to get their heads around what was going on.

So in the Higher Order Language, to make a pot of coffee, you might just say:

OPEN Maxwell House / Folgers / Starbucks
MAKE coffee.

And two lines of High Level code would replace two hundred lines of Assembler code, which replaced two thousand lines of Machine Language code.

This was a great advance for the programmers, and allowed people with SAT scores under 700 in Math to become programmers. By the late 1970's, programming had become a job that many people could do, not just a few Nerd Blossoms with Slide Rules.

The market economy went Bananas. Now computers and programming could be used in every industry, in every function, in every business. All the tedious, repetitive tasks could be done by machines, who would do them exactly the same way, over and over again.

But there wasn't one day when any one company said: Oh, now I'm going to automate my whole operation. No, no. It was a more subtle thing. It was a piece by piece implementation. Today I'll put the Accounts Receivable up. Next year I'll automate the Customer Service department. The year after that I'll put the batch manufacturing on the network. Then when that's done I'm going to add in all the Inventory Control functions and the Supplier Network.

Nobody's system got done all at one time. Each system had some old code and some new code, all mixed in together, like a plate of spaghetti. Programmers came and programmers went. And when a programmer went, the knowledge of what he was thinking in that twenty-two year old Noodle of his, went with him.

The languages and the technology progressed and evolved so quickly --- EVOLVED. That's an interesting choice of a word. Yes. I would have to say the computer networks EVOLVED.

They didn't spring from the womb fully formed.

And because of this, they didn't exactly have a Single Creator.

They were Products of the Committee Process.

And in this Committee-driven Evolution, each new group of young, enthusiastic programmers picked up where the last group left off. Programming languages obsoleted. The programmers who knew them were only a few people. The programmers who followed with the new languages were many more people. The new programmers used the new languages -- which were conglomerations of code that had been built in the old languages. Rollups of the hundreds of lines of assembler language. Soon none of the new programmers knew the underlying code of the old languages, and the logic of the old languages became embedded inside the instruction set and the microchips of the new languages.

Where nobody knew what it was.

And nobody knew how it would act, if it was ever taken out of context.

Thirty-three years ago, when all the new programmers were in their twenties, and computers were a new and exciting toy -- none of us ever believed the year Two Thousand was ever going to come. What twenty-two year old ever imagines she'll one day be fifty five? Bit space was at a premium. Nobody thought they were writing code that would live thirty three years. We knew our solution would not survive the year 2000, but we never imagined it would need to. We thought someone would come up with a better answer before then. I remember the day we sat around the coffee machine laughing at what a stupid solution it was. But who could imagine at that time that computers would take away our ability to live in concert with the rules of Nature? Who would imagine that the national power grid would be run by it, and there would be no manual backup? Who would envision that the people would forget how to grow their food from the land and extract their seeds from the vegetables? Who would believe that our food would be hybrid and we would depend on new supplies in a complex, computer-driven distribution system that could break with the SNAP of two digits?

And who can believe that the Universe will allow its Humanity to survive with that attitude?

We thought somebody else would come up with a better solution, and our code would be obsoleted. In time. We never thought it would live thirty three years.

And indeed, the code didn't live thirty three years -- but the follow-on languages and microchips INCORPORATED the logic of the original assembler. It had to. Computers are driven in their guts by an Array Table. Array Tables are driven by clocks. As the Universe is driven by the clock of the wheel of the year, so also computers are driven by their clock.

The computers needed a means to calculate position. They needed a measure of linear progress. We were young. We were brilliant. We knew the DATE would make a fine progress array table. So we built logic that divides by it.

The power generators driven from mainframe technology were built this way. By design, the computers cannot go farther than 99.

CLOCKS are THE critical component of Computer Logic. Just as they are the driver of the Universe, and the Wheel of the Year. And computer logic cannot be written any other way.

And because of the evolution of computer languages and logic, no one knows where the offending code in a massive multi-million line system is, or what it is doing. In fact, few people could ever find it. It has become like salt, dispersed throughout the system, impossible to identify. More billions of dollars have been spent by corporate America trying to fix this problem than was spent on the Vietnam War.

But the problem is systemic, a part of the inherent logic of calculation, and on December Thirty-First, Nineteen Ninety Nine plus one second -- millions of computers are going to take the one action forbidden to computers for all time.

And even after they fail, few will be able to find, identify, and correct the failure. New systems will have to be put together. And you know what? When you put together the new systems with four characters in for the date -- you will cause this same problem to show up in the year 10,000. For to use the date as a system driver is a requirement for basic logic. When? When? When? When? The computer has to know. Time is Position. Space is Time. WHEN must be known.

Believe me, the year 10,000 is no farther away in our minds today than the year 2,000 was in the minds of the young system programmers of 1968. We were ALL under thirty years old. We were ALMOST all under twenty-five. Younger than Monica. We thought the Sun would burn out before the year 2,000 came. And who in Corporate Management would take the time to understand the minute details of our programming solutions?

It is not a problem that lends itself to be corrected before it happens. But we have become so dependent, in all aspects of our society, on the computing technology, that a system failure like this will destroy us. It is not just that parts of the nation will be out of electricity for a while.

Our water supply operates from computer systems.

Our businesses will close.

Our banks will shut down.

Our people will panic, and loot, and turn ugly.

It presided over the holocaust, and kept the people contained.

A year before the event, simulated tests that turned the computer date to 1/1/00 in a water supply plant caused the system to inject toxic levels of fluoride into the drinking water. These types of things needed to be looked into by the U.S. Senate. But our leaders chose instead to hold a trial about the President's Sex Life. (Don'tsayitsaboutsexitsnotaboutsex) The disaster was one our leaders should have gotten us ready for. But you know they did not, just as you know the story I'm telling here is Truth. Are the people who Fiddled while Rome burned in the Impeachment trial the ones you expect to turn to when no water comes out of your tap and the lights go out?

In fact, all we can do is follow the bridegroom's advice, and get some extra oil for our lamps.

It wasn't good that we let our whole society become dependent on technology this way. The electric company didn't know HOW to go back to manual methods now. All the people who knew how to operate the plants manually have lost the knowledge. The equipment has been dismantled. There is no option to go back. We shouldn't have lost our knowledges to do things without computers. It was not a good thing for Humanity. It's something that needed to be changed. And if we couldn't see it as a problem, perhaps the Universe received its command to fix it for us.

Here is the plan I've made for my family. Please feel free to use it, and spread the word