In the year 2000, we’ll have flying cars with an all natural, all clean, nuclear power cell to carry us to and from work! In the year 2000, we’ll have homes that clean themselves and furniture made out of a space age polymer that we just hose down to clean! In the year 2000, all the computers will shut down and we’ll be tossed into anarchy and chaos.
Wait…what?!
Who else remembers The Millennium Bug? It was called Y2K, Y2K problem, Y2K bug, and The Year 2000 Problem. Lately, it’s been called “a hoax” by many people. It’s been 10 years since toasters were supposed to shut down, cell towers were expected to crumble, and we would never be able to play Space Quest again. We here at Online Clock decided to take a look back and remember the good old days of the Y2K panic.
What was it? A semantic argument.
Way back in the day when computer programmers didn’t think their programs would last more than a few years, they slung code in a language called COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language). In order to save space with this programming language, they coded the date to be read YYMMDD (this means two digits for year, followed by two digits for month, followed by two digits for the day of the month). It showed up on the screen as MMDDYY, but it was coded as YYMMDD. Macs were coded as YYYYYYYYMMDD (yes, that’s an eight digit year) so this was another problem Macheads didn’t have to worry about, but the term “Machead” wasn’t even known then. The fear was that computers everywhere would read the year 2000 as 1900 and throw everything into “Does Not Compute” Land.
With our gigabytes of ram and terabytes of HDD space, it’s hard to imagine that two bytes would make such a big difference. First, it’d be two bytes for every program that needed a date. That still doesn’t sound like a lot today. Here’s a reminder of yesterday. In the 1980s (when software for the 1990s would be in development), I owned an IBM machine–not a clone, but an actual IBM machine. It contained 64k of HDD space. I used Norton Tree to organize my files, wrote blog entries (I was thinking ahead for you guys) in Word Star 1.0, and printed up cake sale posters in Print Shop 1.0. The mouse had to be installed every time the machine was booted up, because there wasn’t enough space for the machine to remember it. I had to pay extra for a mouse. The whole thing cost $2500 in 1980s dollars ($6500 counting for inflation). So, yes, two bytes was really that precious.
The space problem is what many experts tried to say was the cause. It was a problem to some degree, but the real problem went back further in computer history. The punch cards by which computers were programmed could only accommodate the two digits. It was a physical limitation not a software one.
Let’s recap for a moment. In the year 2000, we faced a problem with computers that started with punch cards. That sounds silly, doesn’t it? But, people took it seriously.
It’s only a date. It’s not a big deal.
There were detractors who tried to speak up, but they were drowned out by naysayers, doomsday barkers, and other so-called experts who have gone into hiding since then. Y2K experts cropped up everywhere in from 1998 to 1999. They sang songs of worry, data destruction, and power outages. Many survivalist groups sprang up out of the woodwork to bring us a whole host of products. Solar powered flashlights, crank powered radios, hand can openers, generators, and bomb-shelters turned Y2K survival shelters were for sale everywhere. There was one commercial that stands out in my memory. It was more propaganda than anything else. I don’t remember the product. At the end of the commercial the family sat in their living room in the dark. Mom had the kids huddled around her under a blanket. A little girl said, “Daddy, I’m cold,” or something like that. Dad started busting up furniture to throw in the fireplace for warmth. All I could think was, “Sure, you won’t freeze to death, but once the fire releases the toxins in that treated and painted wood, you will die.” (OK, maybe I’m a little strange that way…)
Some people panicked. Some people really thought that at the stroke of midnight, life as we knew it would stop. People stock piled food, water, and other supplies. There were even people gathering and storing herbs so they’d have needed medicines. Some people honestly believed their toasters wouldn’t work, their watches would stop, and their homes would be in the dark.
Other people laughed. “Y2K Bug Spray” sold to people with a sense of humor. A “Y2K Bug” plush toy could be purchased at technology stores. All sorts of joke products spread across tech circles.
So what happened, once the year 2000 finally arrived?
Nothing. Nothing happened- nothing at all! Here’s why.
The toaster, coffee pot, and a lot of software aren’t dependent upon the date to function properly. There were reports of credit card companies having problems with cards expiring in 2000 being read as 1900 and being treated as expired, but we can’t confirm that. There were no power outages. The world didn’t run into chaos. Our toasters still worked.
Some companies put a lot of effort and money into becoming Y2K compliant. No one knows if that was wasted money or not. Some people say it was. Some people say it wasn’t.
Millennium panics aren’t new.
The 2012 Doomsday Scare - the hucksterism's starting all over again...haven't we learned anything from the Y2K panic?!
When the world clocked Y1K, people panicked. When the world clocked Y2K people panicked. Now, we have the Unix Millennium Bug breathing down our backs with Y2K38 and the PS Y2k+10 Bug.
It’s a good thing I still have my old can of Y2K Bug Spray.
But I still want that flying car.
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