I was born in 2000. I’ve always heard that Y2K was just dramatics and paranoia, but I’ve also read that it was justified and it was handled by endless hours of fixing the programming. So, which is it? Was it people being paranoid for no reason, or was there some justification for their paranoia? Would the world really have collapsed if they didn’t fix it?
In: Technology
Yes and No. I HIGHLY doubt it was going to detonate nuclear weapons, shut down all transportation, and send the world into an apocalyptic scenario. Electronics were not that tightly integrated, ubiquitous, or interdependent.
What was happening was a crescendo of programmers shouting from the rooftops that something needed to be done before it was too late. It was known well beforehand, but just like modern enterprises, if it’s not an immediate threat, it can be fixed later. As Y2K approached, the warnings got as aggressive and amplified as possible, because no one knew the totality of the risk if nothing was done.
Eventually, the tipping point was reached when businesses realized that the world was unlikely to end, but THEIR OWN company may collapse or be held liable for not taking action. They started buying Y2K insurance to cover their liability if their code forced people to get stuck in elevators, or caused door locks to fail to open, or exposed their money to hackers to steal. The businesses figured, “Can’t you just do a search and replace?” No…that was not an option in these old applications, many of which were written by people who were already retired or even dead. Changing code that hadn’t been touched in 15 years was high cost, and high risk.
Hell, even today you have airline reservation systems and FAA flight control being run using old mainframes and COBOL scripts because it’s just too costly to replace.
Back to the original question…was it justified? Yes…before action was taken. When Y2K came, there was little impact, which wasn’t because it was unjustified, but because a lot of money and effort went into addressing the biggest issues. There were failures. There were problems…but the world didn’t end.
TLDR: The world was never going to end, but a lot of bad stuff could have occurred, and many businesses would have taken a major hit that could have bankrupted them, and there would have been major disruptions in unexpected areas. Because businesses finally decided to take it seriously, the impact was low.
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