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Do You Remember Technology in the 2000s?
Chat rooms, dial-ups, and floppy disks were wonky and frustrating…but in a way, so much simpler
Twenty-five years ago, at the end of 1999, my boss and I stood on the sky bridge overlooking the center court of the shopping mall we managed. We glanced at each other and smiled.
At this time of year, we’d never seen so many shoppers carrying so many bags. Our merchants were ecstatic. Sales were going through the roof!
But what attracted the crowds wasn’t expertise or clever marketing campaigns. It was Y2K.
The bug that bit the gullible
If you don’t remember, Y2K was a computer flaw that caused thousands of people to panic. That’s because in the 1960s — when engineers first wrote complex computer programs — they used a two-digit code for the year — leaving out the “19.”
But this shortcut caused a conundrum: How would programs interpret “00” when the date changed to the year 2000? What would be the effect on critical mass systems controlling air travel, irrigation, electricity, and more?
No one was sure, and armies of coders were pressed into action. But many still worried that when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000, massive data…