Nothing to fear but fear itself

“IT MAY be the biggest problem that the modern world has ever faced...At midnight on January 1st 2000 (a Saturday morning), most of the world's mainframe computers will either shut down or begin spewing out bad data...This will create a nightmare for every area of life, in every region of the industrialised world.” Thus Gary North, a professional doom-monger who has had a field day with the much-lamented tendency of early software programmers to record the year with two digits rather than four. In fact, it seems increasingly probable that the turn of the year will pass in most industrialised countries with few severe problems. Industrialising countries may suffer more. The main disruption, however, is likely to come not from computer-induced disaster but from the precautions and contingency plans of nervous companies and investors.