Farhad Manjoo writes in to tell us about his Slate series looking back on Y2K, ten years later, "In the first part, which is up now, I look into how Y2K changed the tech industry, and whether it was all a waste. In the second I look at the unacknowledged success of Y2K–it was one of the only times in recent memory that the world has come together and spent a ton of money and time to prevent disaster (which we can't seem to do with other impending crises)."
How big a deal was Y2K? In the run-up to new century, the United States spent about $100 billion combating the bug–around $9 billion by the federal government, and the rest by utility companies, banks, airlines, telecommunications firms, and just about every other corporate entity with more than a few computers. The rest of the world was no slouch, either; estimates for global Y2K-readiness spending range from about $300 billion to $500 billion.
Yet despite all that spending, the world quickly forgot about it. The Senate Committee's final report (PDF) avoids any deep inquiry into whether the money was well-spent, and no other government, private, or academic agency has since looked into the bug. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that we're all a little embarrassed about the whole thing. Just about everyone who'd been worried about Y2K before Jan. 1, 2000, slouched away in shame afterward, less interested in assessing what went right and what went wrong than in distancing themselves from a perceived boondoggle.
(Thanks, Farhad!)
