We live in a worldly concern haunt with the menace of terrorism . But fifteen years ago , the media was in changeless hysterics over Y2 K , or “ the Millennium bug . ” A real coding mistake that required many a fix , Y2 K also provoked outsize paranoia and survivalist tactics that anticipate the end of the domain . What were you up to ?
Y2 K worries were n’t baseless . The common pattern of shorten age in programing and data storage into two fingerbreadth sparked a crisis when it became plain that rolling over from ’ 99 to ’ 00 would make the year 2000 read as 1900 to many systems .
Though the job had been identified by technology specialist for more than a decade prior to 2000 , it was the late ’ XC that saw a frenzy of companies exploit to update their software . This was best immortalized in pop polish by the brilliant cult film Office Space , whose miserable workers were on the chore of snuff it through computer code line by line to correct the computer error .
Peter , Office Space ’s champion , explain the problem to his love pursuit Joanna :
JOANNA : And , uh , what do you do there , Peter ?
PETER : I sit in a cubicle and I update depository financial institution software for the 2000 switch .
JOANNA : What ’s that ?
PETER : You see , they wrote all this bank software and to salve blank space , they put 98 alternatively of 1998 . So I go through these thou of lines of code and uh , it does n’t really count . I , uh , I do n’t like my line of work . I do n’t think I ’m gon na go anymore .
JOANNA : You ’re just not gon na go ?
PETER : Yeah .
JOANNA : Wo n’t you get fired ?
PETER : I do n’t have intercourse . But I really do n’t care it so I ’m not gon na go .
I ’m gon na have to involve you to go onward and watch Office Space if somehow you have not . You will give thanks me later . But let ’s tattle Y2K. substantial result aside , there ’s no doubtfulness that the medium help oneself maintain a steady rub-a-dub of fear - mongering in the lead - up to the New Year .
Talking read/write head on idiot box , terrorise magazine covers and predictions that banks would break down and plane would fall out of the sky had the whole world panicked . The escalating predictions of doom also launched a booming Y2 kilobyte side - business . Bunkers were construct and stock to outlast our coming computer - induced Revelation of Saint John the Divine , and all sorts of outfit and “ be ready ” preparation could be recover . The U.S. governing was n’t much better , as thisfound itemby stave writer Ashley Feinberg bear witness :
FEMA workers are gearing up for a likely Y2 K pinch , anticipate to happen when some computing machine fail to recognize the twelvemonth 2000 and cease to function …
Officials in nearby Miami - Dade County are asking resident physician to have enough food and water system stash away up for 14 twenty-four hours , which would see the orbit through a disruption exchangeable too that triggered by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 .
The Y2k Revelation was averted , and these days it seems almost a quaint sort of crisis . A year later on afterwards I would stand on the same rooftop and determine the smoking pouring out of lower Manhattan where the Twin Towers once stood . These days the media is still in scene over threats to our condom , but our new outsize fears are much more brutal and sometimes terrifyingly real .
And speak of catharsis :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLk-3HPS12Q
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