“Y2K was a very real threat indeed” – a review of the HBO documentary Time Bomb Y2K

“Ironically, the greater our success, the more ‘evidence’ critics will cite for declaring that Y2K was an illusion. But it’s always easier to predict the future after it becomes history.” – Peter de Jager, The Washington Post, January 3, 2000.

 

“There is a general agreement that the Y2K transition went more smoothly than any of us would have imagined. In fact, as noted in the week since the rollover, some people have suggested that Y2K as an insignificant problem, hyped by the media, computer consultants and those with other reasons for hoping the world as we know it was about to end. The short answer is that I don’t know of a single person working on Y2K who thinks they did not confront and avoid a major risk of systemic failure…Y2K was a very real threat indeed.” – John Koskinen testifying before Congress on January 27, 2000.

 

Where were you when 1999 became 2000? Were you partying with friends? Were you sitting on the couch watching the ball drop? Were you anxiously waiting to see if the lights would go out due to a computer problem? Were you sitting in front of a computer at work just to make sure that no computer related problems did arise? Were you not yet alive?

The way you answer those previous questions will likely determine what it is that you think about when you hear someone say “Y2K.”

For the majority of people, it seems that Y2K lingers in their imagination as “much ado about nothing”—a huge panic about a computer problem that would supposedly bring societies to their knees but which passed without incident. For many of those who were born after the year 2000, Y2K has emerged as a sort of shorthand for late 90s/early 00s fashion/music/and culture. Meanwhile, for a not insignificant number of IT professionals, government employees, community activists, and a handful of academics, Y2K represents a serious computer related problem that was thankfully fixed (due to the work of those aforementioned IT professionals) before anything too terrible could happen. To some, Y2K is the story of a laughable techno-panic; to others, Y2K revealed the hazards of societies becoming too dependent on computer systems; and to others still, Y2K was a basic (if widespread) code problem that required them to work their butts off in the 90s.

All of which is to say, that today many remember Y2K as being about hyperbolic apocalypticism, while others remember Y2K as being a very real computer problem—and those in the latter category are far more likely to be the people who actually worked on dealing with Y2K.

The new HBO/Max documentary Time Bomb Y2K, by Brian Becker and Marley McDonald, explores Y2K both in terms of the outlandish headlines, and in terms of those who had to put their heads together to address the underlying technical problem. The documentary certainly does not treat Y2K merely as a joke, but neither does it shy away from reminding viewers of the sorts of coverage (and individuals) that are why many people remember Y2K as a laughable matter. Near the end of the film, the computer professional and prominent Y2K commentator, Peter de Jager states: “I don’t believe that we as a human race learn from our mistakes, we don’t learn from history.” Hopefully, Time Bomb Y2K will lead to some people developing a more nuanced understanding of Y2K, though it is just as likely that people will turn off the film only to remember its most outlandish moments, thereby proving de Jager’s woebegone point.

Time Bomb Y2K begins with the apocalyptic, placing its opening scenes at a workshop/training where people are learning low-tech survival skills for if/when the coming computer failure causes the lights to go out. From these scenes in the wilderness, the documentary moves into a quick sequence of voices commenting on Y2K, alongside a variety of bright images that remind viewers what computers (and computer adjacent culture) looked like in the mid-1990s. Eventually a date appears on the screen, informing viewers that they are being taken back to 1996, at which point President Clinton and Vice President Gore are presented in the act of helping to (quite literally) “wire” a school for the information superhighway. The 1996 segment is spent further orienting the viewer to the techno-culture of the era. Alongside Clinton’s techno-utopian commentary, the familiar faces of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos all appear singing the virtues of computers and the nascent Internet. While flashes of computers in pop culture (with scenes from the films Johnny Mnemonic, The Fifth Element, Hackers, and Jurassic Park) add to the 90s flavor.

It is as the film shifts from 1996 to 1997 that it begins to really focus on Y2K. Here, in clips drawn from news broadcasts, the viewer is told about Y2K—informed that the problem is at base about computers having been programmed to store dates using 6 digits instead of 8, meaning that the century digits have generally been left off. In these clips from 1997, the film introduces the bearded and bespectacled, “computer age Paul Revere,” Peter de Jager who speaks calmly but ominously of the problem, even as he carefully makes it clear that the dangers are by no means inevitable, they are only what will happen “if we don’t fix the problem,” while de Jager emphasizes that the problem is one that can be fixed. Clearly, the problem wasn’t completely solved by the end of 97, and as the film shifts into 1998 the dangers of Y2K are explained in greater detail. As various newscasters and anonymous technical figures comment, the problem is not simply the code itself but the way that societies have become so reliant on computer systems and the fact that so many computer systems are now intertwined with each other. The problem is not simply that a couple of computers here and there might have problems, but that the computers having problems might be those that are literally keeping the lights on. President Clinton and Vice President Gore reappear, delivering comments at the National Academy of Sciences (7/14/1998) about the seriousness of Y2K while making clear that their administration is handling the problem—while introducing John Koskinen (the administration’s “Y2K tsar”). Alternating between de Jager and Koskinen, along with other news coverage, the film features some sober and somber voices speaking of the “potential for serious disruptions” even as they emphasize that the work is being done to head off such disruptions. And though Y2K is emphasized as very much a problem of the 90s, de Jager makes clear that IT folks had been warning about this issue for years, and a brief tangent explores some of the history of computing and features Grace Hopper telling the tale of what may have been the first literal computer bug.

Shifting into 1999, the documentary features clips of Leonard Nimoy (yes, that Leonard Nimoy—Spock) opining on the dangers of Y2K, and the ways in which Y2K is forcing people to realize that when it comes to computers “perhaps we’ve taken them a bit for granted.” Now the IT and government voices begin to recede, as the documentary places more attention on gatherings of community activists and those preparing for impending doom. There are those talking about how to prepare their neighborhoods for when/if the computers fail, alongside quaint visits with those who have gotten themselves off the grid in anticipation of that grid failing. Viewers are taken to a “Y2K readiness expo” where survival gear is being hocked, are shown reports and clips of militia leaders using Y2K paranoia to recruit, treated to televangelists and biblical prophecy relating to Y2K, and given a general taste of those preparing for a Y2K caused end of the world. Granted, this is contrasted with a clip of Koskinen testifying before Congress emphasizing that Y2K is not going to be the end of the world, as well as de Jager arguing that all of the apocalyptic coverage is muddying the picture (and that in his assessment the warning has been heard and the work had been largely accomplished). Of course, de Jager and Koskinen’s comments are much less entertaining than the clips from the made-for-tv Y2K: The Movie, or the clips from other late-90s movies that seemed to speak to a public anxiety about impending doom (there are clips from The Matrix, Strange Days, Lawnmower Man, Independence Day—and others).

As 1999 enters its final week and then hours, the news coverage is mixed with comments that gun sales are up alongside international news (Boris Yeltsin resigns, and Vladimir Putin takes power) and with clips of Koskinen reassuring viewers that things are going to be fine. The revelry as 1999 becomes 2000, makes it abundantly clear that (as one headline that appears on screen puts it), “that dreaded bug didn’t bite.” There are charming clips of home video celebrations of that New Year’s Eve becoming the following New Year’s Day, mixed with a collective sigh of relief, as newscasters talk about how now attention can fully shift to the Presidential race between Vice President Gore and (then) Governor George W. Bush. There is a final word from Koskinen pushing back on those who were already treating Y2K as a hoax, with Koskinen stating that “no one who worked on this thinks that,” and there is de Jager’s ominous comment that he fears nothing will have been learned from this. But ultimately the film closes out with a recording of several children expressing their hopes and fears for the new millennium.

Time Bomb Y2K attempts to maintain a difficult balance in presenting the narrative of Y2K. It seeks to provide those who remember Y2K for its hyperbolic apocalypticism with a nostalgic trip through the doomsday fringe; while also seeking to vindicate those who emphasize that Y2K was a real technical problem, one that may not have really risen to the scale of an apocalyptic danger, but still a very serious problem that required very serious work to fix. It’s a challenging balance to maintain, and unfortunately Time Bomb Y2K does not really manage to maintain it. While the film makes some admirable attempts to emphasize the underlying technical realities of Y2K (and the effort that went into fixing those issues), the film’s focus on the voices of doom winds up overwhelming that message about the technical realities while also muddling the overall message of the film.

The irony of this is that in many ways Time Bomb Y2K winds up reenacting one of the issues that so frustrated those who were working on Y2K. Namely, the way in which the media narrative around Y2K kept elevating the most hyperbolic voices in a way that obscured the story of the technical problem, distracting from all of the hard work that was being done to handle that technical problem by focusing on a handful of folks heading for the hinterlands. Writing in the pages of Computer, in his “Diary of a Y2K Consultant” in 1999, the computer scientist and Y2K commentator Howard Rubin lamented that “CBS News contacts me regularly for information on Y2K, but they don’t really want to speak to me, they want the crazies.” And Rubin’s sentiment is one that was voiced by and shared by many other people working on Y2K throughout the 90s (in IT, in business, and in government): a sense that the straightforward information they had to convey about Y2K could not get enough of a hearing, because the tv networks (and even many newspapers and magazines) preferred to cover “the crazies.”

Which, alas, makes a certain kind of sense. What makes for better television: a bespectacled IT worker sitting in front of a computer screen explaining what they are doing as they check computer code, or a survivalist with a funny mustache and a gun talking about how the federal government is going to use this crisis to declare martial law? What magazine are you more likely to buy while in line at the grocery store: one that has a long technical article on exactly what IT workers are doing to fix a computer problem, or one with an apocalyptic cover image and the words “The Day the World Crashes” on it? In Time Bomb Y2K the viewer is treated to some of the trailer for the (extremely forgettable) made-for-tv Y2K: The Movie, but what is missing from the documentary is the way that those in IT and government responded to that movie by lambasting it for its many inaccuracies, while warning that it was feeding into a paranoid attitude that was not supported by the facts on the ground. Indeed, commenting on Y2K: The Movie in the pages of Computerworld, Leon Kappelman, a scientist who worked on and wrote about Y2K extensively, noted that the movie “trivializes the whole problem.” But those like Rubin and Kappelman often had a hard time getting their voices heard over the apocalyptic hubbub drummed up by things like Y2K: The Movie. And, without meaning to belabor the point, Time Bomb Y2K features some of Y2K: The Movie—but Kappelman and Rubin are nowhere to be seen. And thus, it’s hard not to see these clips from Y2K: The Movie in Time Bomb Y2K as once again “trivializ[ing] the whole problem.”

These issues are connected to the interesting choice by the filmmakers to rely solely on archival footage for Time Bomb Y2K. The film does not feature recordings of interviews staged for the documentary itself, it features no sit-downs in which the people featured in the film look back on Y2K with the privilege of hindsight. Nor, for that matter, does the film feature anything in the way of voice-over narration, or title cards that help guide the viewer through the film. There are dates that are periodically flashed on the screen, as the year slowly ticks closer to 2000, but the film chooses to let the archival footage speak for itself even as the filmmakers’ choices of which archival footage to use (and where) creates the overarching narrative. In the decision to rely exclusively on archival footage, the film is largely at the mercy of the way that Y2K was portrayed by the mass media—the quality of which was largely captured in the earlier comment from Rubin. This is not to say that there was no solid or reasonable reporting—the clips of Koskinen make it clear that reasonable voices were heard—but much of that reasonable reporting wound up bouncing back and forth between the experts saying “don’t panic” and a clip of someone panicking. Here, yet again, the problem is that footage of people sitting in front of a computer fixing code just isn’t that exciting, and C-SPAN footage of experts testifying before Congress isn’t that exciting…but footage of people buying survival supplies is simultaneously exciting (“what if they’re right?”) and amusing (“look at these weird people?”).

The further problem that this generates, especially for a documentary like Time Bomb Y2K, is that it winds up flattening out the differences between technical experts and apocalyptic voices. And in elevating clips of those apocalyptic voices, it can make it seem like they had a similar authority, and similar reach, as those expert voices. Time Bomb Y2K features some clips from a militia group video on Y2K, as well as from a bible prophecy recording about Y2K—and while both of these are certainly part of the overall story of Y2K—it’s worth considering the extent to which they reflected genuinely prevailing attitudes, versus the extent to which these are “fringe” figures being held up to gawk at. It is certainly amusing and unsettling to watch a militia leader slowly dancing to Auld Lang Syne, but it is much less clear what that clip really tells us about Y2K. After all, Y2K was hardly the first (or, alas, last) time that unsavory groups have used a real crisis to try and recruit people into conspiratorial movements. Similarly, the lengthy segments featuring individuals who have decided to go off the grid, receive as much (if not more) attention than the IT folks actually doing the remediation work. And in the grand scheme of Y2K, there were a heck of a lot more of those IT folks, and what they were doing was much more significant for handling Y2K. Similarly, considering how focused people in government were on pushing back on this sort of doom and gloom (that the media kept elevating), it is curious that we spend so much time with people on the fringe and pretty much no time with members of Congress who were disseminating more reassuring messages. And in terms of actual societal power and influence, the elevation of fringe figures and the exclusion of more representative voices winds up making the film rather lopsided.

Granted, Time Bomb Y2K does attempt to keep things somewhat focused on the more serious side, and it does this largely by focusing on Peter de Jager and John Koskinen. And to the extent that the film has a narrator, that is a role played by de Jager and Koskinen. To be absolutely clear, de Jager and Koskinen are vital figures in the history of Y2K (and, in my opinion, two largely unsung heroes who have never received the credit that they are really due), and the extent to which the film highlights them is reflective of the fact that they were both frequently interviewed throughout the late 90s. Without meaning this in anyway as a derogatory statement: de Jager and Koskinen were on television a lot (they were two of the “go to” experts). As central characters, de Jager and Koskinen are important choices, not only due to their prominence but also due to the arc of their commentary on Y2K. For while both men took a firm stance in highlighting the seriousness of the problem and emphasizing the work that needed to be done—by the end, both were also emphasizing that the work had in fact been done and that there was no reason for panic. In 1993, in the pages of Computerworld, de Jager penned the article that made the IT community really pay attention “Doomsday 2000” (he did not pick the title), but by 1999 he was writing on his website of “Doomsday Avoided.” Both men had sought to galvanize the efforts to fix the problem, and by the end both men were openly recognizing that the problem had been fixed. And, on a related note, both men also chafed against the hyperbolic apocalypticism that was flooding airwaves and magazine covers.

While de Jager and Koskinen are understandable selections as central characters for Time Bomb Y2K, in some ways the focus on the two men diminishes the scope of the problem. After all, it would be only too easy to watch Time Bomb Y2K and conclude that the things that de Jager is saying were really just his opinion or that he was in it for himself (the film does feature an interview in which de Jager is rudely questioned about his speaking fees). Yet de Jager was hardly alone in speaking out about Y2K as a member of, and on behalf of the IT community. Alongside the aforementioned Rubin and Kappelman, there are numerous other people from the world of IT who were outspoken about the challenges of Y2K and the work that needed to be done, and was being done, to fix it. Providing clips of more of those people would have—to be fair—diminished the focus on de Jager, but it also would have made it clearer that these concerns were very widely shared by a range of respected figures in the computing world. Similarly, while Koskinen was a key figure (he was Clinton’s “Y2K tsar”) it would have been great to see more focus on other individuals within the government who were focused on Y2K. The Senate created a Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, and the voices of its chairs Senator Bennett and Senator Dodd (as well as some discussion of that committee’s extremely informative reports) could have further grounded the discussion. Likewise, at one point in the documentary there is a clip of Koskinen being questioned by Representative Constance Morella—but what goes unsaid is that Morella’s committee held numerous hearings related to Y2K that regularly summoned experts to testify. And, what’s more, sitting to the left of Morella in that clip was Representative Horn who chaired the first Y2K related hearing in Congress (in 1996), and who regularly sparred with Koskinen over whether or not the government was doing enough. Indeed, there is something ironic about the documentary’s focus on Clinton, seeing as numerous members of Congress were frustrated by Clinton’s inaction around Y2K (by the time Clinton spoke before the NAS—as shown in the film—members of Congress had been asking him to speak out about Congress for years). Here, again, the issue is that in giving so much time to those on the “fringe” and so little time to those in IT, government, and business actually working on the problem the documentary fails to properly show the scale of the effort and energy that was going into managing Y2K.

The previous comments about earlier efforts to get Clinton to speak out, highlight another challenge regarding Time Bomb Y2K. Namely, how heavily focused the film is on 1998 and 1999. In many ways this is, again, reflective of the way that the media focused on Y2K primarily in those two years. For 1998 and 1999 really were the years when the public interest in Y2K exploded. And yet it winds up giving a somewhat slanted vision of Y2K. Many in the computer world had been warning about the issue that would become Y2K long before the 90s (Bob Bemer was warning of it in the 70s), and while the film features some moments with Grace Hopper it sadly does not use these occasions to comment on the creation of COBOL or the longevity of software code. There was even media attention to the issue before the 90s, The New York Times was warning that “For Computers, the Year 2000 May Prove a Bit Traumatic” in 1988. And some branches of the government got to work on fixing their Y2K problems in the 80s (the Social Security Administration realized Y2K would be a problem earlier than most, and got to work on the problem early). As was mentioned previously, de Jager helped sound the alarm on Y2K for the IT community in 1993, Congress began paying serious attention to Y2K in 1996, and the work on Y2K was being conducted throughout this period. The dark humor here, is that by the time the media and the public started really paying attention to Y2K (around 1998) many in the IT community were starting to feel a bit more relaxed—not because the problem wasn’t real, but because many of them felt by 1998 that the problem was under control and that they would be able to handle it in the time remaining. Which, in turn, was part of the reason why so many in the IT community were so annoyed and frustrated by the way that the media kept framing Y2K in the most apocalyptic of terms while elevating the voices of doomsayers instead of the voices of people who actually knew what was involved in correcting the problematic code.

And yet, for all of that, there really was a fair amount of uncertainty surrounding Y2K. Looking back at it with the privilege of hindsight, it is easy to pass judgement, but in that time the question of what might happen was less clear. Indeed, this was a point driven home by the various reports that came out of the Senate’s Special Committee that emphasized “the Committee has no data to suggest that the U.S. will experience nationwide social or economic collapse. Nonetheless, disruptions will occur and in some cases those disruptions will be significant.” Time Bomb Y2K is at its best in the moments when it wrestles with this uncertainty, when it allows various people (including some in the know) to admit that there was real uncertainty. Government officials wanted to make sure that nobody panicked, but in its “Y2K and You” pamphlet (created and distributed by the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion, FEMA, and the FTC), the government was still advising people to prepare as they would for “a winter storm” just to be safe. And while this focus on the uncertainty does not necessarily justify those who were preparing for the apocalypse, it should inspire some more empathy for the groups portrayed in Time Bomb Y2K sharing tips around a sign that reads “individual preparedness is for those who can; community preparation is for those who cannot” (this was a slogan of the Y2K preparedness group called The Cassandra Project). Yes, there were some who prepared for Y2K by buying guns and heading for the hinterlands, but there were also many people who prepared for Y2K by setting up food pantries at their churches or trying to get to know their neighbors better.

Of course, the matter of uncertainty, in turn raises the question of what it was that people were truly expecting. When it comes to Y2K one often hears people say “they said planes were going to fall out of the sky” (indeed, one hears this repeated in the documentary), yet what is less seldom asked is who is the “they” in this statement. To be clear, there were people on the apocalyptic fringe predicting that planes would fall out of the sky. But there are always people on the apocalyptic fringe predicting doom, and usually we take their predictions with numerous grains of salt, and instead ask what responsible experts are predicting. And when it came to Y2K (especially by 98 and 99) most of the experts within IT, government, and business were predicting something along the lines of a “bump in the road.” Some isolated problems here and there, but nothing calamitous. Because the problem had been recognized, and the problem had been fixed. Certainly, there were some with expert bonafides who were thinking that things would be worse than a “bump in the road,” but what folks like de Jager and Koskinen (as well as most others in IT and business) were predicting was a “bump in the road.” Not planes falling out of the sky, not nuclear power plants melting down, a “bump in the road.” The kind of thing you drive over and keep going, and then you eventually forget it even happened.

Nevertheless, the anxiety around “planes falling out of the sky” (which folks like Koskinen were working tirelessly to emphasize was ridiculous) wound up setting the social expectation. And thus, when 1999 became 2000 and no planes fell from the air, it was hailed as if nothing had happened. Granted, more attention to the historical record shows that quite a lot of “something” did in fact happen—it’s just that most of that “something” looked decidedly non-apocalyptic. The Senate Special Committee on Y2K’s final report featured a lengthy appendix listing “examples of Y2K Glitches” alongside the note that “There is no incentive for corporations or countries of the world to openly report computer problems. As with any internal problems, organizations will likely simply fix them and continue their operations unbeknownst to the general public.” And such a sentiment was supported by many of the technical periodicals of the time, wherein those who worked on Y2K quietly admitted that there had been lots of “bumps” which IT departments had quickly smoothed over.

Of course, most of those bumps didn’t make headlines, or the nightly news—but many of those who worked on Y2K have not forgotten them. And even in the early days of 2000, if you go read the technical magazines, you will find that many in the IT world were already suspecting that they had done their jobs so well, that people would act like the whole thing had just been a hoax. As Leon Kappelman put it in Information Week in February of 2000:

“the IT profession deserves a combination of the Nobel Peace Prize, knighthood, and the Medal of Honor for the way it handled the year 2000 problem. We kicked the Y2K’s bug’s butt, and we did it efficiently and effectively. We did it so well, in fact, that we made it look easy to those who weren’t paying attention anyway. It can be called an overnight success that was five years in the making. If you don’t believe that Y2K was about real problems that needed to be solved and real risks that needed to be managed, you probably don’t believe polio was real now that vaccination has all but eradicated that bug.”

As a snapshot of Y2K, as in the cultural moment, Time Bomb Y2K provides an amusing portrait of baggy fashion, massive computer monitors, 90s pop culture, and a pre-web 2.0 hopefulness about the promise of the information superhighway. As an engagement with Y2K, as in the year 2000 computer problem, Time Bomb Y2K makes a valiant effort to highlight the reality of the technical problem while ultimately undermining its seriousness by focusing so heavily on apocalyptic voices and hyperbolic media coverage. Throughout the years of the actual year 2000 computing crisis, those involved in working on handling Y2K were concerned and frustrated by the ways in which the elevation of overblown catastrophizing distracted from the reality of the problem and the work being done to fix it, and unfortunately by elevating the overblown catastrophizing Time Bomb Y2K winds up distracting from the technical realities of the problem and the work that was being done to fix it. The film is ultimately less a corrective to the popular misunderstanding of Y2K, than it is a work that—intentionally or not—will wind up feeding those popular misconceptions.

And this is a shame. For by confronting us with the risks inherent in our dependence on computer technologies, Y2K can serve as a powerful warning for us twenty-first century citizens who, if anything, have only become more reliant on computer technologies. And a detailed exploration of the risks of computer dependence, and the importance of proper computer maintenance, has the potential to remind us of the complexity and fragility of the high-tech systems that keep the grocery store shelves stocked, allow us to communicate, and literally help keep our lights on. You don’t need to be a doomsday prepper or a believer in bible prophecy to understand that our daily lives are heavily intertwined with the continued functioning of our computer systems. Furthermore, if such systems were to fail, the results could be quite serious—not just for people in the 90s, but for you reading this right now. It is easy for us to laugh when we look back at Y2K, but our laughter is made possible thanks to the efforts of legions of unsung heroes who knew that the problem was no laughing matter. And as we sit here at the start of 2024 looking at a world convulsed by a range of serious and horrific problems, Y2K can also stand as a reminder that it actually is possible to listen to the experts and to ensure that they have the resources they need to fix a problem before it can turn into a disaster.

Near the start of the 1999 section, Time Bomb Y2K provides a lengthy clip of Leonard Nimoy speaking about Y2K, in which Nimoy says:

“In a very real way, we’re all responsible for Y2K and there’s no one to blame morally or otherwise. We’ve all benefited from the technologies which have improved our lives, and we have therefore encouraged those same technologies to develop at ever more accelerated rates. And, yes, perhaps we are now realizing that we’ve taken them a bit for granted, and have indeed become too dependent on the byproducts of our collective innovations. How fragile do we now find ourselves before the juggernaut of our own inventions.”

Occurring at a moment in time when the omnipresence of the computer was still something of a novelty, Y2K revealed “how fragile…we now find ourselves before the juggernaut of our own inventions.” And more than two decades after 1999 became 2000, we would be foolish to think ourselves any less fragile or that juggernaut any less dangerous.

 

More on Y2K…

Life’s a Glitch – What the Non-Apocalypse of Y2K Can Teach Us

The Lessons of Y2K, 20 Years Later (Washington Post)

Waiting for Midnight: Risk Perception and the Millennium Bug (book chapter)

“I’m so sick of Y2K” – a review of Y2K the Movie

Waiting for the Fail Whale – What Y2K Can Teach Us About Twitter

“Y2K is real. It’s coming” – On the Righteous Gemstones and Remembering Y2K

COVID-19, COBOL, and Y2K

About Z.M.L

“I do not believe that things will turn out well, but the idea that they might is of decisive importance.” – Max Horkheimer librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com @libshipwreck

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