Personally, I feel that the coming New Year will be a huge disappointment to most people. The suicide rate might climb a bit, but I don't expect anything remarkable to happen. The Millennium, as it is called, has no cosmic significance whatsoever. It is an entirely human construct. The fact that we count in base ten, identify a certain sidereal day as January 1st, and erroneously use some supposed historical event as the starting point for our calendar are all entirely arbitrary.

It amuses me that in our increasingly secular society that we even had to invent a secular, non-mystical reason to fear the coming of the Millennium. The sun is not supposed to be swallowed by a dragon and God is not calling the faithful for battle at Mount Meggido. Instead, we have the Y2K bug. And despite the last few years worth of scaremongering, I doubt even the bug will have any momentous consequences.

Oddly, though, I am looking forward to starting a new year. Although the new century and new millennium won't actually begin until the following 1st January, what matters is that people believe they do. There is a palpable aura of fatigue hanging around these last few month's of the Twentieth Century. This gloom will be washed away with the New Year and the survivors will be invigorated by the newness of everything in the bright and shiny, (perceived) new millennium. People could be inspired to do great things. Maybe.

We, as Amiga users, have things to look forward to in the coming year as well. There will be phase5's G4 accelerators, POP boxes and maybe others; perhaps we will even see a PPC-native port of AmigaOS. Could 2000 be the year of the PowerPC Amiga?

Happy New Year and slàinte,

Rich