Gavin Dudley
THE first second of the year 2000 will see your personal history vanish forever. At least as far as your bank, government and insurance company are concerned. And perhaps it is typical that these bureaucracies do not seem disturbed at this prospect.
More than 80% of the computers controlling the obvious and invisible digital transactions around you are currently unable to process information generated in the year 2000. The root of the fault lies in the dd/mm/yy (day/month/year) format used by computing systems to keep track of the passage of time.
Using only two digits to represent the year on your computer’s time-keeping devices would result in 1999 (displayed as “99” on your computer) to revert back to “00” as this clock ticks over, effectively sending it backwards in time to the year 1900.
To understand the scale of the resulting chaos, try to digest this:
* Computer hardware and software are likely to be carrying this inherent fault. Of course, each set of hardware may use several different pieces of software.
* Each record resulting from a transaction may be passed between several different computers and processed by several different pieces of software.
* Often these computers are located at different institutions, sometimes in different parts of the world.
* Any single piece of hardware or software handling this data could corrupt it and render it completely inaccessible, or worse, inaccurate.
Now multiply these records and daily data transactions by the computer network systems used by banks, government departments, stock exchanges, retailers, the military, agriculture and food production, power and energy, telecommunications, medical and scientific institutions, stockbrokers and insurance companies worldwide.
Worse news is that the computer industry, notorious for its ability to adapt and “patch” its way into the future, is at a loss how to correct this situation.
Methodically upgrading and rewriting thousands of software applications, replacing millions of computer components and extensively testing new systems is a process that would have to begin immediately.
Perhaps the reason that many companies have chosen to ignore this crisis is the price tag – $50-million to $100-million for each of the Fortune 50 organisations – though experts predict that the legal consequences could run into trillions of dollars and the closure of up to 20% of US companies.
And the brightest prospect you might hold out for is to stop having to make those payments on your car.