Most people must have heard about the so-called "Year 2000 problem," or Y2K, as the turn-of-the-millennium computer glitch is known in techno-speak. Newspaper columns are filled with warnings of pandemonium in banking systems, airport control towers and other vital public facilities, just because computers, programmed to treat years in two digits, cannot recognize the year 2000 and will decide to shut down. Never before in the history of mankind have so many people been so fixated on one single technical foulup. Welcome to the age of techno-mania.
This is no bugaboo. Rather, this collective anxiety reflects one reality: how much the modern man is at the mercy of technology. Yet, at the same time, with advances in computer technology, in microbiology, in life sciences, we feel we are finally getting the upper hand over nature. Some scientists even try to play God and attempt to create life on their own.
Hedge-fund managers become modern-day Midases with the touch of a few computer keys in the electronically meshed world of finance. Nations believe they can break the will of another nation with the use of "smart" bombs and missiles guided by big eyes in the sky. Even sexual prowess can be instantaneously enhanced with a wonder drug.