The History And The Hype

Two digits. That's all. Just two lousy digits. 1957, they should have written, not 57. 1970 rather than 70. Most important, 01-01-2000 would have been infinitely preferable to 01-01-00. Though most of the dire predictions connected with that date--the Year 2000 computer bug's moment of truth--are unlikely to come true, a little computer-generated chaos would provide a fitting conclusion to a 40-year story of human frailties: greed, shortsightedness and a tendency to rush into new technologies before thinking them through.

How did this happen? Who is responsible for the bug we call Y2K? Conventional wisdom goes something like this: back...