If anyone were draggd off the street, or from their homes, and asked what their wishes would be for the New Millenium, there is no argument what they would say - Y2K protection.  As you know, Y2K is the programming glitch that hampers our computers.  The dates on nationwide computer terminals are a two digit symbol, the last two digits of the year.  But, once the clock reaches 2000, every computer that has not been adaquately repaired, will simply go dead, or screw up, or display what we all know and despise: the blue screen of death.

In this New Age, nearly everyone has a computer.  Their vital files are nestled in their hardrives, and their communications span the globe with their nifty Internet service.  To put it briefly, the world has become digital.  Years ago, people would have told you that the world was controlled by those with brute strength, but it is the brains of a person that really matter.  Society today has virtually "upgraded" to a world of those brains.  But is that what really matters?

In this digital day and age, every thing is done for us by a machine.  It has taken nearly the soul out of life.  Our wish for the New Millenium is that people will look past the terminal, into the real world.  We have digitized and computerized our very selves to the point where it's downright scary.  If we can once look up from the mesmerizing glow of the desktop, then maybe we can work out what's wrong with the world.
We're not saying that our wish is to have the Y2K virus demolish all computer communication.  It isn't.  It is our wish that if, and when, banks and computers worldwide crash that it won't matter that much.  We have so much faith in this mindless box of wires and transistors that so easily goes out of service, it will happen eventually.

We would choose the problem of hunger.  Why?  Because every year who-knows-how-many drives and fundraisers are started to help feed people in far-off lands, and in countries that treat them like animals, not to mention America itself.  This is totally avoidable.  The world contains enough food to feed everyone.  There are warehouses owned by Harris Teeter and some old guy named Kroger.  We, the people, gobble up so much junk food and canned goop that we are a nation of chubby, rotund people.  People in other countries look like scarecrows, with portruding ribs and bellies pencil thin with fatigue.

The problem with food is the balance.  If we could get it through our Taco Bell-addled minds that we could simply feed the world by eating only what we need to, no one would go hungry. If we could stop guzzling so many grease-soaked sticks of potato and opened our hand to the people begging for a bite, the world would be better.

Although hunger is probably an easily fixed problem, it is not the worst.  Without a doubt, what ravages this simple planet is the horrors of war.  Can't we all just get along?

People march to distant isles to stab, shoot, plunder, kill, and mangle foreigners. For what?  To have the same thing done to them.  At every single second there's a war going on somewhere in the world: in the Middle East, in Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and even the wars that no one hears about, from the primitive battles with sticks and stones of uncultured African tribes to the gang wars that take place in our very own homesteads.

The world is capable of such marvelous things, and such horrible atrocities.

Which do we want?