ABSTRACT
What does it mean when the millennial turn, in the past marked by prophecy and hope, is reduced to a computer glitch? Most likely “Y2K” will be remembered as a virtual event that did not happen. But as a diagnostic and symptom of the pathologies operating in the complex system of the military-industrial-mediaentertainment network, we best take the accident seriously. This is especially true after Y2K+1 looked to be the real thing. First there was the domestic accident of the United States presidential election, in which (voting) machines were injudicially deemed to be more competent than (counting) humans. Then the new Bush administration was almost immediately beset by a series of international military accidents. These accidents were distinguished by an accelerated shift from particular incidents into what we might call “global events,” a virtualized state of affairs in which the rapid interaction of multiple players, complex systems, and networked information technologies produce a globalized security crisis.
