What Lesson Did We Learn from the Millennium Bug Crisis? Will There Be a Centenary Bug Crisis on Taiwan in 2011 When the Republic of China Celebrates Her Centennial Anniversary?

The revolution of high-tech fever has dramatically changed the way we live, work, and think, and it has become the driving forces behind the trend of politics, economy, and personal relationship. The scale on which it exerts impact on business and society is unprecedented. In the last decade of the twentieth century, the advancement of digital technology led to the rise of integrated information processing industry. The innovation of microelectronics in terms of the depressed cost of computing power and memory makes millions of people capable of affording a desktop computer in that it is not only cheap but also ubiquitous. Such a fascinating proliferation has, with the digitization of information, significantly initiated the users into an age underlying the convergence of voice, image, and data.

     As computers enter the bloodstreams of society, widely-implanted microchips in almost every electronic product soon affect each sector of the social economy that has largely depended on, and penetrated by, computerized data. Through the universal digital language of computers (i.e. the binary code), there emerge the telecommunication industries that, based on the foundation of fiber optics with transmission reinforced by satellites, have progressively formed a highway network to bridge the international frontiers. Today, the semiconductor designers can accommodate millions of transistors in one microchip. As more and more single digital data are stored in the chips, personal computers have been transformed into a machine featuring large main memory, strong processing power, and huge disk storage capacity. In one word, personal computers have been entertaining a potential of replacing mainframe to become the standard working tool of individuals.

     However, the rosy and optimistic scenario of computer industries does not guarantee a smooth progress forever. A sensible assessment of “bugs” or viruses in the development of systems has now merited a widespread public attention, especially after people were faced with a countdown to the beginning of this millennium ten years ago. Although the current computers are mathematically powerful enough to count to zillion, its amazing computing process is closely related to the accuracy of the data. Unfortunately, its ability to recognize the data is less than undesirable and any misreading of the date will give rise to bizarre calculation.

     At the dawn of twenty-first century, bugs were expected to blossom in the date field, conducive to a misjudgment by the logic circuits. It turns out that back in the sixties and seventies when the computers were invented, manufacturers tended to scrimp on the then highly valuable memory and storage space in order to make data entry easier. As a result, the y unanimously used the last two digits to represent the roll-over date in the system. For instance, 71 means 1971 and 82 means 1982.

     As a corollary, as the time is rolling over to year 2011 (the 100^th year after the founding of the Republic of China), will the operating system and applications in Taiwan automatically take it for zero, meaning 1911 in the computer’s dating system? This invalid value is likely to be detected as an error. Such a crisis is reminiscent of the millennium panic when most were afraid that the operation system and applications might automatically take it for double zero, meaning 1900 in the computer’s recognition pattern.

     Confused this way, computers will be making a string of miscalculations, even to the extent of going haywire. In the belief that by 2000 many currently used softwares would fall into disuse, programmers in the sixties and seventies allowed the computers to read only the last two digits of the calendar year as an abbreviated way of keeping track of time and conserving more memory space. However, so far many softwares are still in use, proving that such an abbreviation is a short-sighted mistake with its far-reaching consequence still beyond measure. Such a trivial and deliberate programming decision, after being replicated for so many years, has caused a free-floating anxiety on the part of the users because any debilitating and annoying glitches in their computers will finally lead to a massive clash of machine logic, in either the software or the hardware or both, terribly affecting their routine and daily task.

     Other critics speculate that the use of the two-digit field in dates was motivated not so much out of a scarcity of digital real estate as an attempt to rip more money out of the consumers by the computer vendors and consultants. Although this assumption seems less than convincing, there is no denying that quite a few computer manufactures indeed look forward to a higher product turnover rate through a date limitation like this.

     As computers are shut down or conk out in confusion, the most expensive peace-time nightmarish blunder will appear in the history of human endeavor both in the organization of private enterprises and governments. In this digitally dependent society, a fiasco like this is by no means simply a bump in the road in the sense that any embedded date-sensitive chips are likely to become vulnerable and yield an anomalous processing. Many apparatuses that do not seemingly rely on the date are likely to be proven date-related, thus causing insidious problems. To say nothing else, computerization means the constant updating of stored data. For this reason, data in 2000 were likely to be “updated” by the data in 1999 because double zero might be taken for 1900 whose data were considered excruciatingly old by the computer.

     The high-tech vulnerability to offending chips is now perceived as a lurking human catastrophe. Single failures one after the other will ripple through the overloaded system to produce disastrous consequences. The intricate and interlocking reliance on the high-tech microchips made it seemingly unlikely for many industries to muddle through the Y2K storm whose prevalence and virulence might influence devices such as traffic lights, thermostats, elevators, telephone networks, video cameras, microwave ovens, ventilators, security and cooling systems as well as any device with internal clock or timer in it.

     Owing to the fact that many automated factories are equipped with computerized robots in the assembly lines and other computer-aided designs, the extent to which Y2K storm would have engulfed suppliers, distributors, and the panicked public of customers was foreseeable, boding ills for chaos and uncertainty. In addition, the pervasiveness of this storm might cover areas such as custom checkpoints, energy infrastructures, providers of computerized services, public transportation, power generation, medical care equipment, telecommunication, even the safety risk of the nuclear power plants and the military weaponry. What if the radar screens for national defense or civil aviation suddenly went dark? If unable to meet the deadlines of Y2K compliance, a considerable ratio of power grid like aforementioned might have failed and the supply and distribution of foods and fuels might have been interrupted. An outage of electricity and water supplies were then also expected to be rendered possible by the link and interconnectedness between each sector of the digital society.

     Since conventional paper work has been incorporated to a considerable extent into the electronic offices equipped with terminals and processors, installed electronic gadgetry are being used everywhere in the banks, retailers, instant services, marketing, constructions and other investment projects. No one could imagine what calamity would have ensued once if all the transactions in these areas had ceased to conduct in their regular manner. Bewildered computerized ticketing system might wrongly affect all applications in the civil aviation and the control of air traffic and other public transportation, enabling commerce and communication to grind to a halt. Such a dislocation of electronic grids and mistakes in phone bills, accounting statements, bank balances, and the operation of stock markets and multinationals might heap misery on most parts of the earth by causing irreparable disruptions to daily life. For one thing , the gas utilities might bill their users for a time span starting from 1900 and the credit card companies might charge their customers for a purchase of 100 years plus interest. The daunting problems resulting from billing errors and delays in transportation as well as the loss of industrial production might wreak havoc on our daily economic activities, not to mention the resulting lawsuits and legal contentions that might amount to trillions of dollars.

     Code renovation, testing, and implementation in response to millennium bug disaster were extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive. Fixing the buggy code involved the rewriting of millions of lines that was as difficult as it was tedious, taking more time than was left before the dateline. Time was pressing hard if programmers wanted to do proper testing for each application. To battle the bugs, many governments and private sectors had hired technical staff of contractors to plug the holes by revising software and other offending chips as the first step in their eradication measures. They accelerated Herculean efforts to save the software debacles, hoping that their systems could recover from the adversity as they crossed the threshold of this millennium. However, there were millions of lines of software code waiting to be examined that made the thorough search in the repair work not easy. Worse yet, many exchange data, though not closely related to the date, were still failure prone because they are built in the computerized maintenance programs, rendering their insulation or neutralization highly complicated.

     Quite a few small businesses were intractably complacent without knowing that Y2K crisis might not be so easy to tide over as thought. At this, many governments demanded that if the lack of readiness on the part of suppliers, stockbrokers, insurers, banks or airlines hurt their client by taking him or her out of service, their accountability and legal liability would be looked into in a serious manner. In other words, organized efforts were being boosted to address the technical issues encountered by the private sector with a focus on the prevention and alleviation of the lurking impact, the fast-tract solution of which required the share of information and the promoted spirit of cooperation.

     With the project of bug control encouraged by the government, many private enterprises stared prodding action in avoidance of their operation going offline. However, the existence of computer network and computerized mechanisms made the reworking of individual internal system much less cost-effective than expected, with some big organizations looking into the figures of billions. It was not easy to rewrite millions of line of code and later went over to correct every possible spot where the date was mostly likely to appear. Spreadsheets and date-sensitive programs were especially highly susceptible to the buggy application. Therefore, it was not unusual to see some corporations invest millions of dollars to ferret out their problems. They hired qualified work force of trouble-shooters and engineers for their remediation plan, painstakingly fixing and correcting lines of code in the hope that their system could recognize the first two digits of date.

     Nor were the backward countries left unscathed, due to the growing interdependence of global economy in which also involved the small firms located in the backwater regions with their business operation the least to do with computerized data. Some experts even predicted that the negligible effect of Y2K-inspired pessimism might be felt less painfully in the western counties than the less developed countries where aging computers are widely used. In order to experience the storm uneventfully, all business, especially the corporate information technology managers, were persuaded to plug the gaps in crucial production and administrative systems with the awareness that resources should be allocated and coordinated in such a way as to have their debugged system running safe and sound once for all. With all contingency planning activities focusing on such a dire-consequence event, each corporate organization was hoping for the best and plan for the worst with their top priority set on the readiness status on Y2K compliance.

     In face of such a formidable challenge, many big businesses had then put their development plan on hold until the Y2K threat was over. The transition from Dec. 31, 1999 to Jan. 1, 2000 was perceived as the most sensitive period of time, but there was no guarantee that nothing would be malfunctioning after that crunch day. In many less developed countries, rectification works had not fared well, owing to the funding short fall on the one hand and lack of alertness on the other.

     With the dateline looming large, how to make the computer Y2K compliant and immune from the bugs inhabiting in it involved not only the technological know-how but also the dimension of logistics and management. A complete halt or insufficient supply in the stockpile inventory, due to the lag or shutdown of production, was likely to trigger a global recession in light of the foreseeable decline in buying and evaporation in demand. If a digitally dysfunctional society did become a reality as conceived, the possible scenario was not easy to evaluate.

     If the industrial society had been unfortunately knocked off its footings after year 2000, economic and civil unrest would have ensued. The doomsday vision predicted a world-wide recession, political instability, run away inflation, the shortage of food and supply, accidents on air, land, and sea, and even latent danger of oil spill and tragedy of the nuclear power plaints. Many websites preached such knee-jerk apocalypse in association with the Y2K breakdowns. Cultish prophets of doom pushed too hard on the public apprehension over the unspecified Armageddon of the digitalized world. Such alarming internet gloomsites brought into full play the End-Time theme, saying that it is all in God’s endgame.

     In response, secular survivalists had already started their stockpiling projects by buying as many daily necessities as possible in preparation for the collapse of social order. In their plan, they were to face off calamities with sufficient supply of dehydrated canned food stashed in the basement. Gas-powered home generator was another hot item for the Y2K-anxious. According to their visions of doom, if programmers had not been able to have problems ironed out after Y2K set in, social disruptions would have triggered another wave of non-computer-generated chaos in which rioting hordes would rampage on the property of those who were well prepared. At the stroke of midnight on Dec, 31, 1999, a wide range of riots and turmoil might come to the surface, leading to the ultimate perishing of mankind. This imagined annihilation and death-wish fantasies were of such magnitude that biblical allegories were seized upon to carry the infectious nature of religious millennialism to a new climax. In other words, dedicated prophets of doom envisioned the bug phenomenon as part of God’s plan.