I sat intently listening to the speaker at the local networking club I was attending thinking, “why didn’t someone think about this when creating these computers”. And the more he tried to convince the audience this was some life altering event, either the audience didn’t care, or just didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation.
That was back in 1999 and society was fast approaching what was coined Y2K. And that speaker who was presenting his take on Y2K was using fear as the basis for convincing people to hire him. The fear of meltdowns, computer memory failures, data loss, and even user lock outs were being used to build that fear. Some even believed that our nuclear arsenals could be exploited because of this situation.
December 31, 1999, was a significant date because it marked the Y2K (Year 2000) problem or “Millennium Bug.” Many computer systems and software used two-digit year representations (e.g., “99” for 1999), which raised concerns that when the year rolled over to “00” in 2000, these systems might interpret it as 1900 instead of 2000, causing potential errors or failures.
While extensive efforts were made to fix and update systems prior to the new millennium, the anticipation of widespread computer failures and disruptions led to significant concerns and warnings. Ultimately, many of these concerns turned out to be less severe than feared due to extensive preparations and remediation efforts, but the Y2K problem served as a valuable lesson in the importance of proactive software maintenance and system design.
There was no meltdowns, no end of the world, no chaos…it came down to just turning off your computer for a few minutes between the switch from 1999 to 2000 – that was it. And that speaker who tried so hard at selling the fear of Y2K…well, I don’t know what happened to him. He never returned to the networking club.
But towards the end of December every year I think back to 1999 and I wonder about all the businesses who paid Y2K fixers big bucks to feel safe.
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