by Technology Librarian Josh
I remember the lead up to January 1st, 2000: a dull anxiety slowly getting louder and louder until all thoughts are fogged by the worst-case scenarios. News story after news story explaining the Y2K problem, people’s reaction, and what the fallout was going to look like. This was a magic threshold we were going to cross that no one could stop and there was nowhere else to kick the can. We had to solve this problem to maintain our current way of life.
“A problem is a chance for you to do your best.”
– Duke Ellington
The original sin that evolved into the Y2K bug started innocently enough. It was a cost saving method in the early days of computing. Memory was expensive and limited, so programmers decided to use a two-digit year format like 55 instead of 1955 for the year. Of course, this becomes a problem when the year 2000 can be confused for 1900 later on. “How many problems could this shorthand create?” you might ask. Well, some of the worst-case scenarios include air traffic failures, collapse of emergency services, banking failures, and nuclear catastrophes… Nothing to sneeze at.
“History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes.”
– Mark Twain
Some readers might not be old enough to remember the Y2K problem, but you’ve definitely experienced something similar within the last five years. To give you an idea of what Y2K felt like let me compare a couple of global events that came to mind while researching this topic: Covid-19 pandemic and CrowdStrike shutdown.
Obviously, Covid-19 shutdown was so different from the Y2K experience, but it made me think of the general cloud of anxiety hovering over everyone. It also felt like every problem from getting toilet paper to supply chain disruptions stemmed from this horrible domino effect of covid. It highlighted our dependence on technology with everything moving online: remote work, remote learning, doomscrolling, facetime, etc. Tech is such a powerful tool, but if it’s your only way to work, learn, and socialize then we have some problems.
A cleaner comparison would be the CrowdStrike outage. The cybersecurity company CrowdStrike distributed a faulty update in July of this year which caused 8.5 million systems to crash globally. This grounded flights, stopped subways, 911 operators couldn’t dispatch help, stores shut down, and hospitals canceled surgeries. This is what we thought was going to happen in January of 2000. CrowdStrike was able to fix it within a few days, but it’s definitely a stark reminder that we are so reliant on the technology around us and without it a lot of our lives can’t function in the same way.
“I don’t need time. I need a deadline.”
– Duke Ellington
Technologists and government leaders globally took note in the mid to late 90s and made an enormous investment of $300 billion to upgrade computers and software to be Y2K-compliant. (Isn’t it ironic a cost saving measure in the 50s would cost so much later on?) This sprawling problem had to be tackled in a way to identify systems most vulnerable, manually fix software and hardware issues, test equipment to see how it would behave after the ball dropped, and open up modes of communication for global cooperation, which IT professionals at the time were not in the practice of doing. It all paid off because when the calendar flipped the worst-case scenarios we were all fearful of never materialized. Banks, airports, nuclear power plants, and Tamagotchi pets all survived the jump to the new millennium.
Looking back 25 years later, I’m filled with a deep sense of optimism. This slow motion tragedy was nothing to shake a stick at and it was avoided by a group of people all pulling in the same direction. As we look at global issues we’ll be facing in the future I think it would behoove us to remember Y2K as a blueprint for addressing these large-scale, sprawling problems. I can feel my email filling with constructive feedback disrupting my vibe. I know this reads as if I’m living in a fantasy land. There are caveats: we need good leaders with foresight, we need time, and we need cooperation. The good news is we have all of those, we just need to give good leaders power, trust each other, and get to work.
If you’re interested in more on this topic, check out a screening of the HBO Documentary Time Bomb Y2K on January 8th at 7pm or the interview I’m conducting with the directors on December 4th on our YouTube page.
