The New Age of Anxiety

Abstract

One often hears that we live in an age of anxiety. With the turn of the new millennium, it looks as if scientific research, economic development, military interventions and the power of the new media are less and less under public control, and that all kinds of catastrophes can be envisioned in the future. In the last months of the old millennium, people especially experienced this anxiety when they were bombarded with information about the danger of the millennium bug. While politicians gave warning to the people to prepare themselves for the possible collapse of computer systems, it very much looked as if in contemporary society no one was in charge anymore. The fear of possible catastrophes however quickly turned into a search for the conspirators: when it was clear that there was no millennium bug, a theory emerged that the whole fuss around it was created by the computer companies so that they will be able to sell more advanced computers.