Y2K, no big deal

I contributed a short essay to Newsweek’s 2010 project for the Overblown Fears list: Y2K.

Despite the media hype, the biggest story about the Y2K computer bug is that nothing happened. Trains didn’t spontaneously derail. McDonald’s didn’t roll back to turn-of-the-century pricing (no Happy Meals for a ha’penny). And the banks didn’t lose all of our money; we’d have to wait another eight years for that.

Farhad Manjoo recently did a 2-part piece on the lessons of Y2K for Slate.

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