What counted most in 2000?

The human struggle to come to terms with technology was on trial when it required expert testimony to explain how Florida's voting machines work.

By Carol Clark
CNN.com Writer

(CNN) -- The world entered 2000 elated over the dawn of a new millennium and nervous about how the calendar rollover would affect our digitally dependent society. By the time the 24-hour global celebration ended, the prophets of doom had disappeared along with the champagne. Never mind that we did not fully understand the technology that drives our world. We appeared to have subdued it.

But despite all the billions spent on upgrading sophisticated computer systems, not much thought was given to modernizing such basic mechanisms as voting machines. One of the closest U.S. presidential elections in history brought the problem to light. The Y2K bug morphed into the even more insidious hanging chad. We triumphed over the zeros in the calendar rollover only to be tripped up by tiny dents and holes in punch-card ballots.

The Y2K crisis and the voting fiasco were both caused by "trying to do things cheaply and quickly without worrying about the implied difficulties," said Donald Norman, author of the 1998 book "The Invisible Computer" and an authority on human-centered design.

"The problem with these voting machines has been known for years, decades," Norman said. "There have been many studies about the inaccuracies of these machines but it took the close presidential election for people to take it seriously."

Compounding the built-in error rate of the machines was the lack of consideration for the behavior of the humans who use them.

"There's a tendency to blame people: If they can't vote properly then they must be stupid," Norman said. "But I've used a punch-card ballot before, and it never occurred to me to look behind it to see if a piece of chad was hanging on it. Does that mean I'm stupid? If it does, then there are millions of us in the same boat."

The election dispute sparked a telling debate between the two contenders for leader of the Free World. One candidate argued that machines were best qualified to give the final answer. The other declared that only humans could accurately decipher each and every vote.

Their arguments were nested in other issues and conflicts such as state versus federal rights. But underlying the election drama was a universal theme: The struggle for law, government, medicine, business and other human systems to come to terms with technology.

The year 2000 held many striking examples of this struggle.

The world's biggest software producer, Microsoft, was ordered to loosen its grip on the industry in a landmark antitrust trial. Meanwhile, Napster, a leader in the digital media revolution, battled a legal challenge over another key unresolved issue: cyberspace copyrights.

When competing teams of researchers announced in June that they separately had completed a rough blueprint of all the genes of the human body, the accomplishment was hailed as one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time -- as well as one of the most frightening. The powerful computers used to map the human genome are worthless when it comes to weighing the question of how the information should be applied.

The most destructive computer virus in digital history also swept the globe in the year 2000, in the form of an electronic love letter. The virus, which originated in the Philippines, caused chaos in the networks of the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and the British Parliament, among others.

The speed and efficiency with which the virus spread showed just how interconnected the planet is today. And it exposed how vulnerable even the most sophisticated technological systems are to the human impulse to click on three little words: "I love you."

Another love affair that went sour in 2000 was the one between the world's financial markets and dot.com stocks. Once the best performers, dot.com shares plunged in price after many high-tech companies lowered their profit projections. Even the so-called "New Economy," it seems, is ruled by old-fashioned fundamentals of business sense.

While the shock waves of most of these events were felt around the world, they shook up America the most.

"The United States was getting a bit cocky," Norman said. "English was a dominant language. We were the leaders of the Internet economy and the country, of course, was booming economically. But in the end, this is a complex world we live in with many different cultures, many languages and many countries. I would say that now we are being humbled by the Internet revolution. It brings together people of strongly disagreeing opinions. It takes away world boundaries."

The few Cold War boundaries remaining on the planet became increasingly anachronistic in 2000. The feud between Washington and Havana was reduced to a game of tug of war over a little boy. Even the two Koreas managed to take the first gingerly steps toward reconciliation after decades of bitter division.

Leadership power shifts in 2000 for Russia, Yugoslavia and Mexico signaled that those nations -- bogged down by creaking systems of another age -- are determined to set a new course in the 21st century.

"Globalization is clearly a good thing if it is done intelligently," said George Bugliarello, chancellor of Polytechnic University in New York and co-editor of the journal Technology in Society. "The world cannot continue the way it is now, where a minor faction has affluence and many more are very poor."

But digitalization is driving globalization at breakneck speed.

While America spent weeks puzzling over thousands of archaic punch-card ballots, stones hurled by angry Palestinian youths traveled instantly around the world via photographs and videos piped through the Internet. The Israeli prime minister resigned, opening a power vacuum in a highly volatile region.

The United States may be the only remaining superpower but its year 2000 presidential election proved that it is every bit as fallible as the rest of the planet. Wealth, scientific savvy and democratic ideals do not add up to much if you fail to take into account the foibles of human nature and built-in margins of error in setting up balloting procedures for the highest office in the land.

The pressure is on for all societies to ensure that common sense, ethics and principles are in charge of events -- not technology.

"The thing that we must absolutely be concerned about," said Bugliarello, "is the disconnect between science and technology and other aspects of society. We could do more. We could do better. I see this as essential to our ability to move with confidence into the 21st century."