Networker: Ignoring people and wasting technology

December 1, 1999
Issue 

Ignoring people and wasting technology

Who would have thought it? The end of the millennium is upon us (or will be in 13 months, depending on your view), and its most important feature is a technology stuff-up. The Y2K bug, as it has been labelled, is a technical glitch which even the simplest foresight could have avoided.

The Y2K bug results from programmers since the 1960s using a shorthand when storing a year in computer memory — 70 instead of 1970, for example. So when the clock ticks over from December 31, 1999, to 2000, computers running these programs will think that the time is 1900. This means they will think that time has gone backwards and will respond in an unpredictable way (like deciding not to pay staff because they haven't been born, or shutting down a city-wide traffic light system, or firing off a missile).

Those pioneer programmers of the 1960s can be forgiven for trying to save a little time and computer memory. They didn't know how popular computers would become.

But what about the huge corporations that used their work, and just kept on using it (without paying royalties, of course)? Or those companies that decided this problem would create some useful obsolescence, forcing people to upgrade their systems later on? It is conceivable that in 1970 a company could think its programs would be used for only a few years, but that doesn't apply in 1990 or 1995.

An operating system is a set of programs which turns a box of electronic components into a functional computer. Four years ago, Microsoft Corporation released the operating system Windows 95. Amid all the hype, it failed to tell anyone that the system couldn't count to 100, and people would have to upgrade to Windows 98 before the turn of the century.

Users of the more "robust" Microsoft operating system Windows NT have been scrambling to install a Y2K bug fix. A bug fix is the traditional name for a program which fixes up previous mistakes, although for Windows NT, Microsoft introduced the euphemism "service pack".

Not all users are affected at this stage. Systems based on the Unix operating system will be okay for a few more decades.

Rich countries such as the United States and Australia have collectively spent hundreds of billions of dollars fixing the problem. From a rich country perspective, problems can be fixed in national or local computer systems. But for international networks, such as the telephone network, that isn't enough.

A catastrophic failure of one country's telephone system could affect its communication partners. So last year Telstra announced it would be happy to help poor countries with their Y2K telephone system problems.

In October, the Central Intelligence Agency warned of the need for the US to help other countries that are insufficiently prepared for the end of the year, warning of "widespread, possibly prolonged disruptions in vital services that could have serious humanitarian and economic consequences".

So there we have it. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent by governments and companies to fix a problem caused by technology companies in the past few years.

What about some other investments needed for the survival of billions of people about to enter the 21st century: housing, drinkable water, simple and well-known remedies for disease, adequate food? Considering the lives at stake, the cost of providing all of these is pitifully small, probably less than that spent on the Y2K bug. Where is the urgency, the panic, the concern that are gripping companies and governments across the world?

In a strange way it all adds up. A system that can't meet human needs also stuffs up technology.

By Ian Peters

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