The Silicon Valley Dream and What Went Wrong (Part III)

The Silicon Valley seen from Monument Peak near Milpitas, Calif., in a file photo. Yuval Helfman/Shutterstock

Commentary

(This article is part three of a three-part series. Part I and II can be found here and here.)

Y2K and the Repercussions

Prior to the year 2000, the world experienced the Y2K scare. It had to do with the last two digits in a date. Often, dates were written in the format MM/DD/YY. This format left two digits for the year, which meant after 99 (1999), 00 (2000) would come. The scare was the idea that computer systems would think 00 means 1900 and not 2000.