In
the 1960s, clever programmers lopped off the “19” when entering years
in their programs. It halved the amount of necessary memory, and
whether through laziness or tradition became a common industry
practice. But what was going to happen in the year 2000? Would the date
flip over to 1900 and cause massive data corruption and loss? Despite
the media hype, the biggest story about the Y2K computer bug is that
nothing happened. Trains didn’t spontaneously derail. McDonald’s didn’t
roll back to turn-of-the-century pricing (no Happy Meals for a
ha’penny). And the banks didn’t lose all of our money; we’d have to
wait another eight years for that. Whether this nonevent occurred
because of exceptional preparedness or overstatement of the problem is
still unclear. According to
Forbes, AT&T reportedly
spent $500 million to fix their Y2K issues. Meanwhile, the U.S.
government expressed concern about the lack of preparation undertaken
by K-12 schools, small businesses, China, and Russia; none reported
significant problems after Jan. 1. I suspect the nice round number had
a significant effect on our perception of the magnitude of the
situation. 2000! All those zeros! Something just has to happen! We’ll
find out if that was the case on Jan. 19, 2038, the decidedly nonround
date when 32-bit computer systems run out of the necessary digits to
keep time. That emergency bag of grain in your hermetically sealed Y2K
shelter should still be good by then.
