Vanished without a Trace?

by Rick Ross

What ever happened to Y2K? After making sensational headlines for years, on January 1, 2000 the “crisis” suddenly vanished without a trace. To be fair, there were a few last gasps on the way out. Some pundits claimed that people just didn’t understand. They claimed that some of the problems would take years to manifest themselves. In reality, Y2K hasn’t been heard from since.

Why years later is a Y2K redux warranted? It’s simple. Businesses unnecessarily spent billions overdoing Y2K preparations. In fact, we probably witnessed some of the most unwarranted, unchecked spending in business history, yet any post-event scrutiny has been non-existent.

Most computer professionals know exactly what I mean. On December 31, 1999 many weren’t with their families. Instead, at the direction and expense of their companies, they were in their offices or in nearby hotel rooms poised to leap into action at the first hint of impeding disaster. I doubt this was the ideal way to ring in the new millennium.

Understanding the causes behind this phenomenon are important for every business, even today. While Y2K is gone, the same underlying forces are still present and must be held in check.

Anatomy of the “Crisis”

Let’s start at the beginning. For good but sometimes shortsighted reasons, programmers sometimes stored year information but not century information in company databases. For example, a membership expiration date might be stored as “70” instead of 1970. Without explicit century information, some computers might misinterpret this date as 2070 after the turn of the century.

Many recognized the problem and set about the tedious work of updating programs. Most problems were easy to identify, although applying remedies was sometimes time consuming.

While this work progressed, others, either driven by ignorance or opportunity, saw something much more severe. They theorized that “embedded systems” would somehow produce erratic behavior that “couldn’t be predicted”.

What are embedded systems? These are the computer “systems” that are “embedded” in most of the devices that we encounter everyday, from cars to elevators; even our computers themselves depend upon their own “embedded systems”.

Among computer professionals these devices are often considered black boxes that are just depended upon to work, never mind how. Because of this, some wondered if the “embedded systems” really might be a problem as some that “understood” them were saying.

These fears could have been easily dispatched with a simple test. Computers, of course, have no idea what time it is. You simply tell a computer that the date is after January 1, 2000 and see what happens.

Despite the facts, nagging doubt began to rule as more articles came out describing the onerous potential. As the threat became entrenched in the media, lawyers saw the need to become involved; “Do you realize what kind of liability we could be facing if anything goes wrong?”

This caught the ear of company executives who felt compelled to act. These actions were reported giving more credibility to the articles describing the potential. It was in this manner that Y2K made the jump from the realm of reality into a “War of the Worlds” hysteria.

Did we really need to spend all that money?

To be sure, there was predictable risk properly associated with Y2k. The problem was that companies were also sold on the idea that there was additional “unpredictable risk”. Put simply, all the talk of embedded systems scared them. It also imbued many with enough doubt that they too had a nagging concern that something might happen - but it never did.

The Y2k problem had to be addressed. It required attention, it required work. The problem was that the expenditures greatly exceeded what was justified. The response didn’t correspond to the risk. Hype won where reason was within easy reach.

As amazing as the hysteria was, the story about it never materialized. The explanation for this is simple. Those who hyped Y2K were not about to come out and announce how mistaken they were. Most were silent, but a few had the audacity to claim that misfortune was only avoided because of all the spending and attention!

How much of Y2K spending was unneeded? There’s no way to accurately know, but from anecdotal evidence two-thirds or at least one half of the expenditures on Y2K were based on unfounded worry, not sound business decisions.

Conclusion

Was Y2K really the elevator dropping, nuclear bomb launching, plane crashing, bank account depleting catastrophe that it was billed to be? With the year 2000 behind us, all of us clearly know the answer.

While Y2K clearly won’t happen again, the event was an important and real world test of integrity and the ability to separate fact from fiction. In an industry that by historical standards is still new, without vigilance the same forces will continue to siphon billions more from corporate coffers.