Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Sunday January 04 2015, @01:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-all-love-a-crisis dept.

As we head into 2015, it's hard to think of any technical skill set less relevant than Y2K - the identification and fixing of computer systems and applications that used two decimal digits rather than four to store the year component of each date. As you may recall, the discovery of the problem (or perhaps, that the deadline to fix it was finally approaching) in the late '90s led to media hysteria and dire warnings about a world full of computers simultaneously losing their bearings, like HAL in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. An artist has assembled a memorial to the crisis, in the form of a web site presenting photos of dozens of books dealing with Y2K from various perspectives.

This site could be seen as mindless diversion, but also as a digest of reaction likely to repeat itself in a subsequent "crisis", albeit with different media next time (blogging, for one, had yet to be invented).

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Monday January 05 2015, @05:04AM

    by LaminatorX (14) <reversethis-{moc ... ta} {xrotanimal}> on Monday January 05 2015, @05:04AM (#131765)

    Admiral Hopper warned of the problem even as IBM was shipping their COBOL tools, but by then it was too late.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2