Is there enough time to stop a computer glitch from turning the dawn of the 21st century into a technological train wreck?
Pull up a chair; it's one of the most bizarre debates going.
Everything won't get fixed, say those who predict assorted calamity as a result of the so-called millennium bug, the phenomenon whereby computers accustomed to seeing only the last two digits of a date might confuse the year 2000 with 1900, go haywire, or fail.
``We're projecting 30 percent (of organizations) will have mission-critical system failures,'' said Matt Hotle, research director at the Gartner Group, a Connecticut consulting firm.
Nonsense, say many corporate and government officials who insist that their year 2000 problems will be fixed well before the witching hour.
``The average person won't have to worry about it at all,'' said Ron Cytron, a computer science professor at Washington University in St. Louis. ``It involves a lot of hard work, but it'll get done.''
Will not. Will too. Will not . . . What in blazes is going on here?
With a mere 730-something days to go, one would think the experts would agree on whether the computers that control nearly everything, from banking systems to electric power to traffic lights, will function properly on Jan. 1, 2000.
But the millennium bug isn't your average digital conundrum, and the century of computers is ending with an ironic twist:
How to fix the bug is known and requires no technical genius. Instead, because so many dates are so deeply embedded in so much software in so many systems around the world, the remedy depends on whether people put in the arduous, labor-intensive and expensive work required to do the job.
``The year 2000 problem is not a technical problem,'' said Ron Ridderbusch, deputy director of the California Department of Information Technology, who said estimates it will cost $187 million to fix the state's systems are low. ``It's a project-management problem. It's huge; you have to look at everything.''
Especially the vagaries of human behavior.
Many of those who foresee major disruption cite people's proclivity for denial, procrastination and false hope. They don't trust assurances from organizations whose own business would be jeopardized if they admit to year 2000 problems.
On the other side are those betting on the diligence, resourcefulness and resolve of their fellow men and women. They believe doomsayers are fear-mongering to pump up the growing business of selling year 2000 advice and solutions.
There is no debate on the pervasiveness of the problem.
For companies that don't upgrade to new systems, fixing the bug requires combing through each line of software code in every program that runs their computers.
In older systems running on mainframe computers, that can mean millions of lines of code per system. How multiple systems work with each other must be examined; every piece of equipment that might be at risk needs to be inventoried and its supplier contacted.
For a medium to large company, the process can take two years or more, depending on the complexity of its systems. And that doesn't include time for testing the revisions.
Worldwide, the cost is estimated at a whopping $200 billion to $600 billion by the Gartner Group and others. Like much about the year 2000 issue, those numbers are controversial, and include the costs of companies that have decided to purchase new systems regardless of whether the year 2000 problem was the reason.
But with qualified programmers already in short supply, analysts expect costs to rise as time gets shorter and competition for labor intensifies.
What happens if the bug is ignored?
For nearly three years, many in the year 2000 business have articulated a vision of an eerie electronic chaos visiting the planet, with consequences both tragic and somewhat comic.
Financial markets in disarray and elevators stopping between floors. Global positioning satellites thrown off-kilter and videocassette recorders taping the wrong shows. Social Security checks unsent and warning lights in newer cars blinking in unison.
And while some of these claims are dismissed as hype, the drumbeat of dire predictions, in media articles, on the Internet and at conferences of computer-system managers, has helped spur many American businesses and government agencies to action, and made believers out of some skeptics.
Eugene Ludwig, the U.S. comptroller of the currency, recently told a gathering of business executives that his initial doubts were misplaced and that the bug is, ``if anything, more serious than we had imagined.''
The securities industry is considering an extra holiday, either Friday, Dec. 31, 1999, or Monday, Jan. 3, 2000, to run final tests on its systems before opening U.S. stock markets.
At giant brokerage house Merrill Lynch nearly 100 people are working full time to correct more than 170 million lines of code in its worldwide operations. Estimated cost: $200 million.
Similar stories are heard at major utilities, banks and other companies, which scoff at the notion that essential services will be interrupted.
So why the pessimism?
Leon Kappelman, a computer systems professor at the University of North Texas and co-chairman of a year 2000 working group of the international Society of Information Management, talks to people in the trenches and doesn't like what he hears.
``At this point, we have so much work to do we can't possibly get it done,'' said Kappelman, who periodically surveys the society's membership of 2,700 information technology managers, academics and consultants, to get a sense of what companies and other agencies are actually doing to solve the problem.
From his most recent survey, Kappelman estimates that between 25 percent and 40 percent of the nation's companies and agencies are doing ``real work.'' Between 35 percent and 50 percent aren't doing anything, and the rest are still ``planning.''
Major consulting, research and investment analyst firms generally agree that time has run dangerously short.
``I'm not a doomsayer at all,'' said Bob Austrian, an analyst at the investment bank NationsBanc Montgomery Securities in San Francisco. ``But when I see an ad in the Wall Street Journal in November 1997 from the Los Angeles World Airport looking for bids just to assess its year 2000 needs, I sit and wonder.'' Kappelman and others believe many companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses, simply have not accepted the daunting task and huge costs that confront them.
Some await a quick technological fix that won't materialize. Although there are many tools available that might help companies automate the process, there are so many computer languages, and so much customization of software over the years, that no single solution exists.
Information systems workers also are notorious for not finishing projects on time.
Still other organizations may be doing a good job in their own shops, but not worrying enough about other vendors and suppliers who might not be.
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