“I’m not predicting [post-Y2K] Doomsday, just a wicked global recession and a 30 percent drop in stock prices.”
–Edward Yardeni, chief economist and a managing director of Deutsche Bank Securities, 1999
“There is no need for any individual to have a computer in the home.”
–Ken Olson, president, Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
SOME MORE HINDSIGHT
IN 20/20 Y2KLARITY
“It’s too late to avoid it–you’re going to crash. All you can do now is watch it happen. The information systems community is heading toward an event more devastating than a car crash. We are heading toward the Year 2000. We are heading toward a failure of our standard date format: MM/DD/YY. Unfortunately, unlike the car crash, time will not slow down for us. If anything, we’re accelerating toward disaster.”
–Peter de Jager, specialist on Year 2000 computing issues along with the topics of change, creativity, and management technology, 1993
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
–Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
STILL MORE EDIBLE WORDS
I CAN SEE Y2KLEARLY NOW
“My opinion is that we’re going to suffer a year of technological disruptions, followed by a decade of depression.”
–Edward Yourdon, partner, Cutter Consortium, 1999
“While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.”
–Lee De Forest, American radio pioneer, 1926
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
IT CERTAINLY WASN’T CHEAP
Mitch Ratcliffe, the private computer consultant hired by Softbank’s ZDNet Web site (www.zdy2k.com) to watch Y2K throughout 1999, put the whole thing in superb perspective by comparing the $450 billion spent worldwide to squash Y2K bugs with the costs of other problems. Namely:
– The Vietnam War cost $500 billion in cash as well as the lives of more than 1 million people, including 55,000 Americans. But unlike a war, where the money goes for the stuff of destruction, Y2K spending went back into the economy in the form of improved computers.
– According to the National Institutes of Health, cancer costs $107 billion a year. It affects millions of people each year, killing 563,100 Americans in 1998.
– A single generation of smokers generates $501 billion in excess medical expenses for society, just about what it cost us to fix the bug.
Have a nice Y2K.
