NBC International
Sir:
Your channel has not been alone in discussing the terrible consequences of the short-sightedness of the past generation of computer programmers who used just two digits to indicate the years of the twentieth century. Most commentators suggest that it will cost billions to make adjustments before the end of the century so that computerized records will know the difference between 1900 and 2000.
May I suggest a less expensive alternative to the multi-billion dollar repair operations which seems not to have occurred to others.
: There will be very few businesses or humans functioning in 2000 A.D. which were functioning in 1900 A.D. Other than Air traffic control, Defense readiness, and perhaps banks and the stock market, wouldn't it surely be more sensible (and economical) to handle less immediate tough cases where there may be some uncertainty whether, say, 1930 or 2030 is meant in a given document or record, by individual human scrutiny and decision making. Computers were not in widespread use until the mid-50's. We really have another half century before most business would really have many ambiguess decisions anyway. And it shouldn't be beyond human wisdom to verify that ant individual, corporation, or government record refers to one century or another -- or is probably still alive and entitled to a benefit. Why try at such great cost to solve a problem wholesale when the hard, borderline cases where it cannot immediately be inferred that a bond (or contract) terminating in '36 means either 1936 or 2036 will be so relatively few? It would surely cost much, much less to pass such problems on to a human adjudicator than to re-program every computer in the world. If a human error is made and someone misses a Social Security check, monthly bank statement, or dividend check, this could be readily rectified.
I think that when people get to thinking about this they'll realize both society and the economy can survive the arrival of the next century. All that's really necessary is to make sure future programs are four-digited to make the areas of uncertainty as few as possible for human adjudicators following the arrival of the year 2000.
Sincerely,
D. B. Timmins
(Geneva0
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