INTERVIEW:
Question 1
What kind of research did you do before writing the book, what were your
resources and how much of the story you wrote is only fiction?
Answer
The entire story is fiction: I am a novelist. The only thing that is
real is Y2K, which of course is very real. I did a great deal of
research on the Internet. I had a professional researcher in New York
city who helped me with the details for New York city. I read as many of
the books as existed at the time when I was writing, which was last
summer.
Question 2
Did you need a lot of technical information to write this novel?
Answer
If you're going to understand how computers can break down, first you
have to understand how they work. So I needed to get a technical
education in many aspects of computers. I was not so concerned with the
absolutely technical aspect of Y2K as with the social aspects. It really
doesn't matter how these things happen. What is important is that they
will happen.
Question 3
What kind of reactions has your book been getting in the USA?
Answer
I'm getting all kinds of reactions. People here already know a great
deal about Y2K, and so they already have opinions. They judge my book
according to their preconceived opinions. A lot of people tend to forget
that it's fiction. This is a novel I wrote for my own entertainment and
for your entertainment. People look upon it as some sort of doomsday
prediction book, which it is not.
Question 4
Do you agree with the people who think that in Europe there was a
different kind of perception of this problem because of political
problems like the European Union and the European single currency. There
are many people who say that Europe was thinking about something else,
and so we didn't think about this problem of the millenium bug.
Answer
Yes, you have asked and answered your question at the same time. I do
agree with them. I think that there is a different perception of this
problem in different European countries. It's not all the same, just as
it is not all the same here. I think that some countries and some
governments have done more than others. I think that the United Kingdom
is a little more advanced in Y2K than some of the other European nations,
but that also means that they have discovered more of their problems. I
think that the conversion to the euro currency distracted from Y2K. I
think that the war in Yugoslavia is distracting from Y2K. I think that
many, many resources which should have gone into this problem have gone
elsewhere, not only in Europe and the United States but all over the
world. This is a global problem. This will be a global event. This will
be the first global event of its kind in history, because computers have
no nationality, of course. The global economy has no nationality.
Everything is connected, and when we're all connected like a chain, we're
only as strong as the weakest link.
Question 5
What do you think are the key areas to preserve in case of a millenium
crisis?
Answer
Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "preserve". Are you
talking in terms of a national economy or for personal life? I think
what you mean is infrastructure. I think it is more important to
maintain electric power and water supply, for example, which are more
important than making sure an accounting system works. If the
electricity goes down, nothing works. If we can't have water, we have
serious health problems.
Question 6
You were talking about electricity and water and some other things…
Answer
A lot of people in this country think that Y2K will result in social
chaos. I don't. I don't expect there to be riots, because I think that
by the time the event occurs, people are going to be aware because of
books like mine and the hundreds of other books. As you know I live in
San Francisco. In California we have earthquakes. So Y2K preparedness on
a personal or family level in California is exactly the same as you
would prepare for an earthquake. You need to have a certain amount of
bottled water here, in your house, you need to have dried foods, rice
and things like that, rice and beans and canned foods, and flashlights
and batteries, and things like that, because if you lose electric power,
which is what happens in an earthquake, you need to be able to survive
for a few days until the systems get up and running again. A lot of
people take their preparations much farther. They're turning their
houses into fortresses and getting guns and all kinds of things like
this. These people are crazy, in my opinion. They think I'm crazy.
Question 7
So you keep food in your kitchen…
Answer
Well, I have this anyway, because I'm prepared for an earthquake. We can
have an earthquake tomorrow in San Francisco, and if I don't have water,
I don't have water.
Question 8
Most experts think that the banking area is the one which from the very
beginning has understood the risks and faced them. But in your
experience, how do banks protect themselves from the risks? Will it be a
technical problem or one of people's anxiety?
Answer
Y2K was first discovered at an institutional level in the Untied States
by the social security administration. It was a government agency that
in 1989 discovered that their projections through the year 2000 were not
working on their computers. So the social security administration
discovered what computer programmers had already known for 30 years. The
programmers knew about Y2K when it was created in the 1960s, but it was
created for financial reasons. The reasons why you have data problems
with the computer was that in 1960 a megabyte of memory cost US$3m.
Today it costs about US$1. To save money they saved space 30 years ago.
The programmers knew it, but the administrators of the systems didn't
understand it until 1989, when they discovered it. At that time a few
banks wised up and began to investigate this. Today in 1999 many banks
around the world still haven't done anything. The Central Bank of China
is in big trouble. They don't understand their own software; they have a
big Y2K problem and they're not going to solve it. This is not true in
most of Europe. In the European central banks, they've done a great deal
of remediation, but many of the smaller banks have not. As you indicate,
the problem is with the interconnection with the banks and, of course,
those systems need to be tested, but they have not been tested. Each
bank can control its own system, and they can control and test some of
their connections through the central banks. But if you have a small
bank in Naples that wants to connect to a small bank in Singapore,
unless you test that system, you don't know if it's going to work.
Question 9
And there is no more time left to do this.
Answer
Well, we have about 6 months left. They can do what they can do. I
believe on January 14th this year the Italian government finally
established a Y2K committee to oversee Y2K remediation in Italy. That
was done in January of this year. If it had been done in January of
1995, they might have a chance. But all the committees in the world
aren't going to solve any Y2K problems. The only way you solve Y2K
problems is by getting programmers who understand the programming
language to go into the code, look at the code, find the problems and
fix them. It is simple, hard work. That is the only solution. Prayer
will not help. TV interviews will not help. Only working with the code
will help. That is the only thing.
Question 10
Why did you decide to write a novel about this problem?
Answer
My previous novels were novels of suspense, thrillers, and this seemed
to be a natural thriller. You have all the suspense built right into it.
As we get closer and closer to the moment, midnight, when the century
changes, it's a natural for suspense. So I was interested. At the time I
was writing it, there didn't seem to be too many other novels like it.
Now, in this country there are about a dozen. I don't know about Italy.
I don't know if mine is the only one there or not. If it is, I'm a lucky
boy. I'll be quite honest, I thought I could make some money with this,
just like any writer. This is how I make my living, so I thought that
this would be an avenue that would help me sell some books. I also think
that it's important for people to read not just my book but as much
about this as they can, because the enemy here is not the millenium bug,
it's ignorance. It's the simple fact that we all live in modern,
industrial societies that are controlled by computers, but we don't
understand the computers. The computers are in the hands of experts who
are modern-day magicians. They're wizards, they're like priest. We hand
the control of our lives to them. We're having this interview on a
teleconference system here. I'm in San Francisco, you're in Naples. In
between us are satellites, cameras, all this technical stuff including
many, many computers. How many computers do you think are between you
and me? Right now? Just think for the moment that there are, obviously,
your satellite connections here, and those satellites are controlled by
ground stations. And those ground stations are largely run by computes
to track the satellite, to do all the station-keeping that you have to
do to keep a satellite in space, to provide uplinks, downlinks, all
these are run by computers. Many of the programs on those computers are
date-sensitive, which means they are vulnerable to the millenium bug.
But most people, when they watch TV, when people watch this interview in
July on RAI, they're not going to think about those computers and all
those connections. But if those connections go away, POOF! No more
teleconferencing.
Question
11
May we ask you what you plan do on the last day of the millenium to
face the new millenium?
Answer
I have a very nice bottle of red wine that was grown on the slopes of Mt.
Vesuvio and I'm going to drink it and I'm going to say Happy New Year
and hope that the lights stay on.
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