In all the talk about the imminence of the allegedly catastrophic millennium bug, little consideration has been given to the possibility that it may be more than a technological problem. Even to a neo-Luddite like myself, it at first seemed almost incredible that many of the world's computers systems might collapse on January 1st, 2000, because nobody thought, when they were being designed, of creating a digital memory capable of reading dates beyond 1999.
However, seen in the context of the mindset which has been steering the technologically driven progress of recent decades, this idea takes on the quality of a near-perfect metaphor for the second half of the 20th century.
The bug relates to the inability of many existing computer systems to cope with the concept of the year 2000. Most utilise a two-digit dating sys tem, which gives the present year as 98. The problem is that this system will designate the millennium not as 2000 but as 00, which will then translate as 1900, making nonsense of large chunks of stored information. Some systems may not recognise 01/01/00 as a date at all, leading to a total meltdown. The more apocalyptic prognostications include stock market collapse, recession and even the malfunctioning of nuclear technology leading to global catastrophe.
The idea that computer systems were being designed for their potential for obsolescence is not shocking to any reasonably conscious citizen of the 1990s global economy. That this digital doomsday arises from an attempt to save memory space strikes one immediately as both another example of the short-termism which has afflicted public life in recent decades and a perfect metaphor for our amnaesiac condition, but there may be more to it than this.
If I were to buy a house with a non-renewable lease of just a few years, I would rapidly attract the attention of the psychiatric profession. At the very least, it would be assumed I had suicidal tendencies or a terminal illness, leading me to behave as though the long-term future did not concern me. It would also be remarked that I appeared to have very little concern for those who would come after. All these things are true of the present generation in political and economic power, and that is the meaning of the millennium bug.
This generation in power consists almost exclusively of people born just before, du ring or immediately after the second World War. They came into adulthood and professional maturity in the 1960s, and most achieved power during the 1970s and 1980s.
Because they have created the world in their own image, all of us now inhabit a culture which has internalised their outlooks, ambitions, aspirations and life-trajectories. Thus we are caught up in the final reel of a Hollywood-style drama which began in adversity and darkness, emerged into the light of the Sixties dream and worked its way through a morass of obstacles to be primed for a perfect ending.
One of the most frequent questions asked by sensible people about the seemingly insatiable thrust for growth and progress is: what is it all for? Up until now, we have unkindly assumed that the proponents of this relentless drive were somehow bereft of normal human feelings. In their obsessive desire to make a much improved future - often at the cost of even a bearable present - they seemed to be possessed by dark and insatiable appetites, but now it may be about to become clear that they were going somewhere after all.
This was not some aimless, endless pursuit of growth for its own sake. This was a preparation for heaven on earth. In the movie in their hearts, these people were playing towards a denouement which, unknown to their conscious minds, was scheduled for resolution at the end of the millennium. The dreams, fantasies and imaginings which they had unloosed in their hearts in the Summer of Love were to be realised even as the clock struck midnight on December 31st 1999.
The truth of this is to be seen in virtually every area of public life. The project of European integration, for example, is inextricably bound up with the lives and aspirations of the generation whose imagination was forged in the aftermath of the war. The evidence of the condition is to be seen too in the absence of radicalism on the international political stage - the unwritten assumption being that the present project of global capitalism is in need of no more than the occasional tweak to keep it on course for Year Zero.
One is beginning to get the impression of final preparations for some forthcoming climactic moment; the sense that even modest notions of efficiency have been discounted in favour of some maximum efficiency some time in the future, is inescapable. It is remarkable too that this process is driven by a generation which has supposedly turned its back on God. Never, perhaps, has so much power resided with people who profess not to believe in anything beyond their own technocratic resources. However, just as we should not be waylaid into the superficial assumption that their goal is growth for growth's sake, so too we should avoid the pat observation that they are not motivated by faith and transcendental hope.
Indeed, so sure is their faith that they have made no provision for further endeavours beyond the millennium. They have created a schedule by which the project must be completed and perfect happiness attained, before the century ends. It is as though, in some blind spot in their imaginations, they fancy that further efforts will then be unnecessary.
This sort of 20-century-centricism is the opposite of millennium fundamentalism, in which the millennium is associated with the apocalypse. This is millennium utopianism, in which the target date is identified with a perfect state of human existence, in which all problems have been solved and all the world will be able to live happily ever after, free of history, poverty and conflict, rejoicing in the fruits of present acquisitiveness and accumulation. Both outlooks are equally ludicrous.
The year 2000 is really no more than an arbitrary date on a calendar. When we awake on January 1st 2000, nothing of reality will have changed, but our ability to cope with it may have altered immeasurably. So total will have been our sense of expectation that for a few cosmic moments, we will imagine that we have arrived in some promised land. Then reality will begin to dawn and the sense of despair will be unspeakable. We will enter into a period of social depression, a kind of post-Christmas torpor to the power of a trillion, which may last for a generation.
Almost immediately, the 1990s - indeed the entire century just ended - will acquire a patina of archaic absurdity. Nothing of what we believed, desired, hoped or dreamed will any longer make sense. Our leaders will suddenly surrender to an overdue senility. The idea that everything we ever wanted has not been realised, that we have to go on, to get up, to strive, to hope, will fill us with tedium and desperation.
This is the source of the millennium bug, an unconsciously expressed awareness of this, our deepest collective suspicion.