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Y2K Problem
Planes will tumble from the sky, companies will fail, a run on cash will force banks to close, governments will fall in the panic, all automatic doors will refuse to open, industrial machinery predictions of results of the Year 2000 (also called Y2K or millenium) bug have often been more than a little tingled with 'end is nigh' doomsaying.
In reality, the technological problems of Y2K are likely to be both less dramatic, and a good deal more complecated than the 'end is nigh' scenario. Nobody really knows all effects it will produce, although a lot of work is going into averting the more serious ones.
There is one misconception, however, that can be banished right now - it's not all going to go suddenly pear shaped at midnight on December 31st 1999. Oh, no ; the nature of the problem means that things will stgart to go wrong before then.
Computer chips have found their way into everything from cars to kettles. Modern buildings are crammed with built-in processors (called embedded systems) that control lifts, lighting, sprinklers, and security. In many cases, for safty reasons, those chips will shut down any machinery in the case of anything.
The beginning is that when computers were introduced to the worlds of government, banking, and big business, memory space was at a premium, so that every bit and byte was counted and programs were designed to use little memory as possible. So without the first two digit of the year, the counter can not know that it is the year 2000, and must effectively work on the presumption that it is 1900, all over again.
To completely eradicate the problem every date on every mainframe computers has to be corrected. You only need one that hasn't been checked, to cause glitches for the others.
Question 1: Do you expect such a society as is much more computerized than now ?
Question 2: Are you afraid of anything dreadful caused by wrongly manupulating computers ?
Question 3: Which do you prefer to living, in an original society full of nature or in a modern society full of technology ?
Question 4: Anything about this topic