(5 of 5)
Even though the Times Square celebration went better than expected, the parties worked best in the locations that were able to provide a backdrop of history: Greece's Acropolis, Egypt's Pyramids, the Vatican, London, Versailles and Moscow's Red Square, which partied just hours after Boris Yeltsin handed a briefcase of nuclear codes to Vladimir Putin. Instead of the futurism that all these zeroes seem to command, the event was best celebrated by looking back, partially because futurism always comes off as incredibly stupid. So Seattle, Wash., a symbol for technology as well as troublemakers in sea-turtle costumes, canceled its main party, and no one really missed it.
But more than wondering what the event meant, the more pressing question is, How do you pop up out of your bunker? Should you wear an embarrassed grimace, smiling through the 300-lb.-millet-bag jokes lobbed by your Y2complacent neighbors? Should you be angry, suing all the Engineer Littles who tricked you into believing the sky was falling? Or should you climb back inside, waiting for the systems shutdowns in February because of the leap-year bug?
No, you should emerge from your Y2K bunker as your father did from his bomb shelter after the Cuban missile crisis and as your forefather did from his cave when the first eclipse passed. Like them, you should celebrate. You should celebrate longer and harder than your neighbors who danced and drank while you tested your flashlights. You should celebrate that it's no miracle that the world didn't end because of a few zeroes. That it's no miracle we can still control the myriad intricate systems we have built. That it's no miracle that our global interconnectedness makes us stronger, not weaker. After all, is it a miracle that the sun, which we understand far less than our computer systems, rose yet again?
Yes, it is.
--Reported by the Staff of TIME