[ISEA98] Paper: Steve Goodman & Ccru – K-O Counter-Cultures

Abstract

Care for a thrill? Consider what might happen if the Millennium Bug, that tendency for many of the world’s computers to mistake the year 2000 for 1900, is not eradicated in time… The cover of one news magazine asked recently: Could two measly digits really halt civilization? Yes, yes – 2000 times yes! _The Economist Oct 4th-10th 1997

Cannot a revolution make a clean sweep of all this old garbage… Proclaim a new era and… a new calendar with no reference to AD/BC.
_William Burroughs interview in Research #4-5

COUNT ZERO INTERRUPT.-On receiving an interrupt, decrement the counter to zero.
_William Gibson Count Zero

…so Mbug resistors think MATRIX needs a new calendar – totally steam-punk. Wake up-ITs already K-Time. Count-0_=Greg Date 1900… Count S Zero. Up 2 Date

Chronopolitical immune-response to the Millennium Bug amounts to a program for Gregorian Restoration a retrotranslation of Cyber-(or K-) Time into standard (4 digit) AD dates. The convention which codes years as 2-digit decimal numbers has unconsciously made computers the register of a new calendar, starting with a year zero. Revolution has already happened. Can it be stopped in time?

  • Steve Goodman, UK. Steve works at the Ccru (Cybernetic Culture Research Unit), which is a cultural production and experimentation collective. It has no genealogy, geographical centre, biographical attribution, or institutional dependency. Its activities involve dehumanization of voice/destratification of sound, proliferation of fictional quantities, anomolous theory, and image contagion. Journal: Abstract Culture.