November 15, 1998
The Y2K Problem: How Bad Will It Be?
by
Charles W. Baird and Donna Mittelstedt*
By now almost everyone has heard of the Year 2000 problem. All over the world huge numbers of computer systems are incapable of telling the difference between the years 1900 and 2000. This means that on January 1, 2000 all uncorrected, time-dependent systems could fail. What could this mean to you? Perhaps several electricity generation and distribution networks will breakdown. Think of all that you do each day that depends on electricity. Without electricity even corrected computer systems will not work, water purification and distribution systems will be inoperable, gasoline pumps won't work, police and fire services will be immobilized, deliveries of food and supplies will stop, and stores will quickly run out of inventory as panicky buyers compete to get enough to last until the crisis ends. Banks and ATMs will be shut down.
Does this seem unduly alarmist? Perhaps. We hope so. But the National Guard in several states, including California, is seeking additional funding to prepare to handle possible civil disruptions in the early months of 2000. The Canadian Army is doing the same.
We take some comfort from the normal processes of free enterprise. Every problem is a profit opportunity for entrepreneurs who can devise solutions to it. We count on the self-interest of alert and creative people to drive them to find solutions to our problems. Genuine solutions can be sold for high prices by those first to offer them. Then more and more imitators will rush in to compete with the innovators, and the prices of the solutions will fall. This is not a pipe dream; it is the story of the progress of civilization.
Many software companies have already come up with programs that can fix many systems that are known to have the Y2K bug. The problem is to discover which systems must be fixed, and to do so by an unchangeable deadline. We are confident that eventually all the problems will be discovered and cured, but there is not enough time between now and January 1, 2000 to do so. There are millions of computers and systems all over the world that are interconnected. If only ten percent fail, that may impair the ninety percent that don't. A good computer linked to a bad computer is not of much value. A fix may be as simple as polishing a stone, but identifying ten million stones that need to be polished and then polishing them is a Herculean task.
The task is complicated by embedded chips that have their programming burned into them. They cannot be fixed; they have to be replaced. Many of them are literally buried underground - e.g., in the Alaska pipeline. Embedded chips are in thermostats, telephones, elevators, automobiles, airplanes, railroad track switches, radar installations, satellites, VCRs, and much more. We cannot know which embedded chips will fail without taking out each one and examining it. By December 31, 1999 most embedded chips will be unexamined. We will discover which ones have to be replaced on the next day when the systems that are dependent on them cease to function.
While we do not think that the Y2K problem is the Apocalypse, neither do we think that it is much ado about nothing. It is something in between - perhaps a bad winter. We have invited James McNish, founder of the Kansas City Year 2000 Coalition, and a recognized expert, to address the CSUH community on the issue. We hope you will attend his presentation on November 19 at 7:30 PM in Room 101 of the University Union. Admission is free, and we will serve refreshments.
* The authors are respectively Director and Program Coordinator of The Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies.