It is about the 20th anniversary of the “2000 Effect” or “Y2K Effect” , when the entire world was preparing to face technological chaos as a result of computers not being able to adequately resolve the visualization of the change of the decade. Experts, ordinary people, technicians and regulators, were convinced that computers around the world would fail and networks would crash. Almost as if it were an argument in the purest style of the TV series “Revolution” in which a blackout leaves the world without electricity and humanity is forced to adapt to a world without technology, many predicted not such chaos apocalyptic but they did pose a scenario that would turn the world upside down.
Wherever you were living at the time, it is clear that the 1990s were a period of transition. Consumer technology was becoming very popular in this period – especially during the years leading up to the new millennium – although, for many, it was a new technological frontier for many (remember that the World Wide Web was developed by Tim Berners Lee in 1990).
Then, during the last year of the 1990s, we had the Y2K error, commonly known as the Millennium error.
What really happened?
The truth is that January 1, 2000 arrived, and the announced crisis did not materialize: the planes did not fall from the sky, the prison doors did not open automatically and the criminals were let out, the banks and the accountants were put out. Hands on your head for not even exploding nuclear plants … In fact, by relying on machines to monitor water and radiation levels, it was feared that a faulty computer system could create multiple “Chernobyl” around the world. None of that happened .
So was it just a myth or a serious threat?
There was a risk that our computer systems (first written in the 1960s) would not be able to process the new 00-digit code when the year had to move from 1999 to 2000. When computer programs were first written in In the 1960s and 1970s, computer memory was extremely expensive (about $ 64 million for 1 megabyte). Hence, programmers shortened the year dates from 1975, for example, to just 75. As the year 2000 approached, programmers realized that computers might not interpret “00” as 2000, but as 1900. According to the IT experts, this circumstance would create a blockage of the world system.
In theory, the Y2K effect could have had a devastating impact on all kinds of major industries. There was a lot of media hype at the time, creating widespread fear and panic. While there were no major issues after midnight 12/31/1999, if absolutely nothing had been done about it, Y2K could have been a huge disaster were it not for the sheer number of people who worked long days and nights updating and replacing. computer systems around the world.
Of course, many organizations paid large sums of money to update their computer systems, although, in the end, they did not run into major problems.
An error similar to Y2K could create problems with the GPS
The date system used during the development of GPS-global positioning satellite network technology is only worth 19 years , and is now 19 years old. It’s very serious?
Before you go shopping for survival supplies, the problem is not as bad as Y2K was thought to be as it should mostly affect older GPS units. So what exactly is the problem?
The problem starts from the same point as Effect 2000; The computers had limited processing power and memory, so to save a bit of space, they encoded the dates in 10 bits.
In any case, the chances are extremely high that nothing will happen; the only devices really at risk of malfunction are very old or based on old designs. Even so, the part of the GPS that allows us to find where we are going should not be affected, but anything that depends on a specific date and time would not work correctly (we are talking about very old devices again ).
Many GPS manufacturers have created specific websites to help us solve this problem, so if you wonder if your old device will need some kind of update, you just have to consult the manufacturer’s website.
Effect 2038: the next Y2K is on the way
What about the year 2038? Basically, computers based on the Unix system (all Apple’s, for example) store time as the number of seconds that have passed since 1970: in 2038, the space to store those seconds will be exhausted. Be that as it may, there is still time to solve the mess without creating the panic caused by the Y2K or Effect 2000.
