Y2K…anyone? Planes falling from the sky, computers unable to tell time, nano-level Keystone Kops type stuff bringing everything to a complete stop. I forget exactly what the fear was (we’d wake up on the LOST island?).
This First Friday Briefing (pictured) from the Georgia Department of Defense recounts the “sigh of relief” as all heck did not break loose upon the arrival of the year 2000.
You can rewind an interesting piece of recent history using the Georgia Government Publications portal in the DLG. You can read the executive order from Governor Roy Barnes that established Georgia’s Y2K Interagency Task Force. Review the growing concern in a 1998 article from the State Personnel News titled, “Are state computers going to crash January 1, 2000?” :
Part of the problem is that over 50% of the software programs used by state government are over 11 years old and are obsolete. There aren’t even programmers around who know them. (pg.5)
Or peruse this memorandum from the Public Service Commission in which the “first electronic crisis of an automated society” leads to the conclusion of “four plausible scenarios: (I) “Crisis Avoided,” (II) “Much Ado About Nothing,” (III) “the Tempest in a Teapot,” and (IV) “Crisis.”
(You could also search the vast internet outside of the DLG for “Leonard Nimoy” and Y2K…but you didn’t hear it from me…but do it anyways.)
