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
A little of both.
People with a working knowledge of computers and electronics knew there would be some issues, but those would mostly be related to bookkeeping, interest calculations, and long-term records.
But since fewer people in 1999/2000 had competent working knowledge of computers, there were lots of reports/rumors flying around that cars would stop working, airplanes would fall out of the sky, and power plants would shut down.
When people tried to point out that cars didn’t have computers in them, airplane computers didn’t care about or use dates, and powerplants had backup features, the response was largely “Yea, but how can we be SURE?”
Y2K was an issue, and a lot of people spent a lot of time getting in front of it and minimizing the confusion.
But there was never any risk of global catastrophe.
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