In which I try to do a TARDIS Eruditorum...

I’ve been reading a little too much of Dr. Philip Sandifer’s TARDIS Eruditorum blog, which puts stories and episodes of the BBC series “Doctor Who” into a social context by relating current events from when the episodes aired to the episodes themselves. It’s a very insightful project, and it’s inspired me to try my hand at it. Here goes—wish me luck.

 



 



The addition of a food product to the Museum's exhibits was inevitable. A friend on Facebook found this box of General Mills' “Millenni-O's” on another blog, and it is hosted here with permission. Basically, these are Cheerios sweetened with brown sugar and with an extra shape—a 2—added to the mix, so that you could get a “2000” with every spoonful. Cereals are perishable, and this is why Millenni-O's are almost impossible to find completely intact. The back of the box offers ideas and suggestions on building one's own time capsule of the 20^th Century.  

Yet again, we encounter this theme of time capsules and preserving what came before. It’s so prevalent that I’m beginning to see an overlap between the idea of the time capsule and the crisis surrounding the Y2K computer bug, but I’ll get to that in a moment. First, though, I’ll give you a brief history lesson (oh, don’t roll your eyes, it’ll only take a minute): At the heart of the Y2K problem was the idea that, in the changeover from 1999 to 2000—or 99-00—computers would think that “00” meant “1900” and not “2000.” (This 2-bit configuration came about because the earliest computers had very little internal memory, and corner-cutting was necessary.)

 

 As it happens, there were a few problems around the world, but, on January 1^st, 2000, the world as we knew it still existed thanks to the efforts of some very dedicated experts and technicians. I myself don’t pretend to fully understand what the problem is all about, but I do know that word of it spread across the globe, and with every news report and every discussion the nature of the problem became more and more distorted. At its peak, Y2K’s most extreme vision was the total collapse of society. It was almost a holdover from the fear of nuclear annihilation, which permeated American culture from the 50s to the 90s…I remember being aware of the panic, which hit the public consciousness in Fall 1999 or so. There was a lot of talk about preparing, stockpiling, building a bomb shelter (or using the one you’d built but never got to use when nuclear war didn’t strike), and all that delightful stuff.  

Which brings us back to the idea of the time capsule. Before the Y2K craze, time capsules were a way of preserving curiosities from our time so that our great-grandchildren could have a laugh at our expense a hundred years later. Around 1999 or so, though, the idea of preserving history commingled with the ever-present fear of total societal collapse: If and when the world ends, you can dig up the capsule and show people what life was like before the end. 

Here we are, in 2013. The world as we know it still exists. And, like the steel box that contains things from 100 years ago, we can open our New Millennium time capsule and have a laugh, because the things we did to prepare ourselves for the end of the world relied on some hilarious leaps of logic. Even if society ended on December 31^st, 1999, the world as we knew it would probably still exist. We would still have these things called books, and there would still be these places called libraries. Our villages and cities would not suddenly turn into a sandy desert one minute into the new year.

Boy, weren’t we just silly all those years ago?

 

 

July 14, 1999: GOP Weakens Democrats’ HMO Bill

July 14, 2000: Jury clears US over Waco deaths