Information crisis

An information crisis is a disaster in which major information and computer systems malfunction, causing various problems in the affected regions. It is speculated that the risk of an information crisis is greater in high income nations such as the United States, due to heavy reliance on technology both in the transfer of information and the control of important functions.

Actualities

The only widespread information crisis ever expected was the Year 2000 problem, which in fact never occurred. From the mid to late 1990s, there were fears that such a crisis might occur due to programming errors in computer software which would occur at 12:00 AM on January 1, 2000, due to flaws in programs which would treat the year 2000 as 1900.

Fiction and Popular Culture

* In Tom Clancy's "Splinter Cell," an ingenious Canadian hacker, Phillipe Masse, engineers an information crisis in the United States. The failure of electronic systems results in many casualties, ranging from train crashes and failure of hospital life-support systems to sewage backup at a water treatment plant. The attack is successful not because of the casualties, but because of the unpredictable spreading of effects; rather than taking place in an isolated location, many civilians felt the threat could come from anywhere.

* In the TV series Dark Angel, an electromagnetic pulse corrupts the vast majority of computer and communication systems in the United States, leaving the country in chaos.