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After Y2K, the geeks need a new scam
DAVID BULLARD explains how the biggest fraud in a thousand years resembles the behaviour of a dodgy motor mechanic'The computer boffins predicted that some pop-up toasters might not pop up because of embedded microchips'
I HAVE long held the unfashionably cynical view that the invention of the Y2K bug was little more than an elaborate ruse by the computer industry to make a fast buck and find a way to absorb its inflated labour force. Now that we have made it safely into the year 2000, I am convinced I was right.
That's not to say there were no potential computer problems caused by the move to the year 2000; it's just that the problems were deliberately exaggerated in an attempt to panic business into spending more money to correct problems which probably never existed in the first place.
The point is that nobody outside the computer industry was in any position to tell the geeks they were talking complete drivel, while nobody within the computer industry wanted to spoil a good thing.
It's rather like the relationship most of us have with our cars. When I take my car in for a service and the mechanic sucks in his cheeks and tells me he will need to fit a new flange on the spare gisbet, I haven't the faintest idea what he's talking about, so I tell him to go ahead. If I knew anything about the workings of the internal combustion engine at all, I might be in with a chance. But when he adds gloomily that without the new flange he wouldn't want to be responsible for what might happen to the car on a long journey, I panic and pay up for something I don't even understand.
It's precisely the same with computers, only more so because every company relies on a computer system to a greater or lesser extent.
Management were scared witless by what the boffins told them might happen to their companies if they didn't call in the Y2K compliant taskforce.
We were told that lifts would suddenly stop, planes would fall out of the sky and some cars might not start in the year 2000 because of their sophisticated on-board computers.
We swallowed it hook, line and sinker and when we looked goggle-eyed at the "experts" and mumbled things like "gosh" and "really", the stories became even more outlandish.
In an attempt to test the bounds of our credibility, the computer geeks confidently predicted that some pop-up toasters might not pop up because of embedded microchips, VCR machines would refuse to record television programmes in the new millennium and even armed response alarms would let us down because they wouldn't know whether we were being burgled in 1900 or 2000 and would give up in confusion.
All utter rubbish. Even the Federal Bureau of Investigation tested public gullibility with a sinister warning that 30 000 computer viruses were due to be released on the last day of the year worldwide. By the second day of January some 400 minor computer viruses had been detected, which means that the intelligence forces within the FBI have slightly more than a 1% success rate on their apocalyptic predictions. That ought to worry the Pentagon.
The computer industry will no doubt cry foul and protest that without them the world would have been pitched into a sullen darkness. If they hadn't been prepared to miss out on the millennium revelries and stay up all night on December 31 1999 to ensure a safe transition, we would all be trapped in airport departure lounges and slaughtering domestic animals for food.
Firstly, let me point out that computer geeks are not the sort of people who get invited to wild New Year's Eve parties anyway and, secondly, it was the computer boffins who built the computers that couldn't recognise the year 2000 in the first place, so why we should have any confidence in their abilities now is beyond me.
What really aroused my suspicions, though, was the evident realisation on the part of the computer industry that the bull run in fantastic salary packages for troubleshooters was coming to a rapid end.
One talking head appeared on my television screen to warn that many computer programmers might have forgotten that 2000 was a leap year and the world's computers could all collapse on that day. Presumably, like last time, a large amount of money could sort the problem out. Another, flush with the success of the sting thus far, claimed that we wouldn't really know whether we were Y2K compliant until June.
Why June, you ask? Because it's the first month beginning with the letter "J" after January and it rhymes with "loon".
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