oxjox , 4 hours ago

Y2K wasn’t nonsense. It was unremarkable, ultimately, because of the efforts taken to avoid it for a decade.

20 Years Later, the Y2K Bug Seems Like a Joke—Because Those Behind the Scenes Took It Seriously

President Clinton had exhorted the government in mid-1998 to “put our own house in order,” and large businesses — spurred by their own testing — responded in kind, racking up an estimated expenditure of $100 billion in the United States alone. Their preparations encompassed extensive coordination on a national and local level, as well as on a global scale, with other digitally reliant nations examining their own systems.
“The Y2K crisis didn’t happen precisely because people started preparing for it over a decade in advance. And the general public who was busy stocking up on supplies and stuff just didn’t have a sense that the programmers were on the job,” says Paul Saffo, a futurist and adjunct professor at Stanford University.

What is worth noting about this event is how public concern grows and reacts out of ignorance. Just because a pending catastrophe results in something ‘less-than’ does not mean best efforts weren’t taken to avoid it. Just because something isn’t as bad as it could have been doesn’t mean it was a hoax (see: covid19). Additionally, just because something turns out to be a grave concern doesn’t mean best efforts didn’t mitigate what could have been far worse (see: inflation).

After the collective sigh of relief in the first few days of January 2000, however, Y2K morphed into a punch line, as relief gave way to derision — as is so often the case when warnings appear unnecessary after they are heeded. It was called a big hoax; the effort to fix it a waste of time.

Written in 2019 about an event in 1999, it’s apparent to me that not much has changed. We’re doomed to repeat history even provided with the most advanced technology the world has ever known to pull up the full report of history in the palm of our hands.

The inherent conundrum of the Y2K [insert current event here] debate is that those on both ends of the spectrum — from naysayers to doomsayers — can claim that the outcome proved their predictions correct.