“ Y2K may not literally have happened, but the fear that underlay the panic—that of a dangerously matrixed, overleveraged world, open to massive self-compounding error, vulnerable to manipulation by unseen forces—seems, given recent events, to be pretty spot-on. Most important, the nagging sense that the agents of chaos are now so diffuse and powerful that no central authority can counteract them is no longer something just kooks believe. ”
