The Scare of Y2K
Marjie Clay
5th hour
English 10
K. Nolen
The idea of not having technology in our everyday lives is a scary thought. We rely on technology for just about everything imaginable. Beginning on February 13th, 1984 a man named Paul Gillian alerted the world that there was a possibility of this frightening thought coming to life, this was the idea of Y2K (Computerworld). When computers where first built, the designers of the programs that made the computers operate used only two numbers to indicate the year, instead of four (CNN). Fears rose that when the year 2000 came the computers would not recognize the year as 2000, but as 1900. Technology is a great resource to have in our lives but the Y2K scare has shown us that we have to be cautious when relying on technology because you never know what can go wrong.
“Unless action is taken now to replace update or change all components of these systems, all computer based systems will be affected” (CNN). Programmers long ago adopted a two digit convention to represent the year, which was the root cause to the idea of failures at the millennium, and beyond (Mitre). When the public was alerted about the idea of Y2K, thoughts of what would occur where drastic. It was believed that the Y2K bug would affect every system that had an external interface due to the computer not recognizing the year 2000 (Mitre). Some people believed that the world would become chaotic, and out of control, and that since this bug threatened all the major industries including utilities, banking, manufacturing, telecom, and airlines, nothing would operate; airplanes would not fly, money in banks would vanish, phones would not work, just to name a few (Y2K). Many also believed that every ounce of money in the stock market would just disappear, leaving some people without a penny to their name (Mitre). A fear had risen that because January 1st, 2000 fell on a Saturday, these issues might have not been discovered until the...