The birth of a new religion - are you Y2K-proof?

There was a time - many years ago - when milestones as trivial as the changing of a date were considered entirely unimportant to all bar a select group of learned people who no doubt would wish to debate the philosophical or spiritual aspects of the passing of time. And while raging debates may have ensued amongst the enlightened classes, the general population concerned itself with thoughts of impending doom caused by any likely cataclysmic event, such as a comet crashing to earth, or a volcano erupting, or through large sea creatures coming ashore to swallow up all living things. Many of these simple beliefs led to the development of complex religious sects and societies, some of which survive today. The Y2K religion may not remain with us long enough or have enough proponents to be accounted for in the next Australian census, but judging by the fervour exhibited by the more-vocal doomsayers, life will indeed be tumultuous for those whose lives are governed by computers.

Not me, you say? I doubt if there is a single person in Australia (outer suburbs of Uluru excepted) who will not be affected in some way by the change in the date from 1999 to 2000. It is a portent of things to come that modern society cannot function properly without computers - and computers that work properly. During the past fifty years, people have become increasingly dependent - directly, or indirectly through government and business - on computer technology. 'Embedded systems', which are literally any electrical systems with computer chips inside, can be found everywhere from your car to your video cassette recorder to your toaster (perhaps not all toasters). They are also used to run giant systems such as airport navigation, lifts, traffic signals, telephone systems, bank vaults, and ATM machines. Consequently, many large corporations and government departments are working on solutions to the Year 2000 problem. Yet this problem demands the attention of all businesses and organisations - large or small. Solutions will not arrive by magic, and we cannot expect that we can solve the problem after the event (though the fact that 1 January 2000 falls on a Saturday is a small bonus).

Conspiracy theorists will no doubt be happy to believe that a small network of underemployed programmers who once developed big computer systems back in the 60s and 70s are now boosting their employment value by demonstrating that their systems are about to fall over and are in need of specialist programming to adequately cope. Statistics have been drawn up to show that to rewrite all of the code in software that is considered faulty would take 500 000 programmers ten years to complete - and since there are not enough programmers to do the work, it will take the entire worldwide programming pool of employment 120 years to get it right. What a shame that all of us will not live to see a time when computers will prove to be 'reliable'. In fact, one commentator went so far as to report the following:

'Experts tell us that if it [the millennium bug] is not fixed, when the Year 2000 arrives, our telephone system will be flaky, our financial records will be inaccurate, our government will be paralysed and airline flights will be cancelled without warning. In other words, things will be pretty much the same as they are now...'