Report: Y2K a Hoax
by
B. L. Reynolds
3:00 a.m. 1.Apr.2000 PST
WASHINGTON -- It's a made-for-the-Net tale with all the right ingredients: Y2K bug, boy-genius hackers, MIT grad students, and experts who all but predicted that planes would be flying straight into the ground.
It was all an elaborate hoax, the The Massachusets Institute of Technology reported today. The prestigious school is investigating two doctoral candidates at its Artificial Intelligence Labs, part of the MIT School of Advanced Computer Sciences.
MIT's magazine of innovation, Technology Review, said that two grad students created the entire Y2K hoax. In a paper to be published April 1, 2000, the students claimed that "slipshod security and over-reliance on experts who had no expertise" allowed them to falsely plant outrageous stories in major media outlets, leading to a "War-of-the Worlds" type hysteria.
There never was a Y2K threat, the magazine stated.
The stock market plunged in reaction to the news. The Dow closed the day down by 360 points; the tech heavy NASDAQ dropped 5%, nearly 240 points. One Wall Street Trader summed up the feeling on the exchange floor: "Boy, do we feel like idiots."
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Ultimately, Y2K was the century's biggest non-event.
Businesses and Governments had spent "hundreds of billions of dollars" repairing important computer systems, which in actuality, needed no repairs, according to the General Accounting Office.
The fuss over the millenium bug comes just a few weeks after the country was declared "Y2K OK." After spending untold billions needlessly, many of the overpaid experts proudly crowed "We are ready for the big event."
But it turns out the event was a non-starter.
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Related Wired Links:
Danger: Y2K Ahead!
14.Dec.1999
Y2K Watch
1.Dec.1999
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