’The elevator won’t know if the year is 1900 or 2000!’ warned Dave
Barry in the International Herald Tribune. The turn of the year produced
many humorous predictions of what the millennium bug would do - even
music pages had fun advising that acoustic guitars would be essential at
millennium parties.
A confusion of messages and target audiences meant that the spokeswoman
for Action 2000, the Government body urging compliance on SMEs, had to
backtrack on dire warnings in order to avoid feeding panic among the
general public. The good news was that companies like Sainsbury’s
reported their debugging activity, but the bad news remained that safety
risks are a real preoccupation.
In contrast to an alarmist tone in the UK, another Herald Tribune
article reported well-documented US readiness in the public and private
domain.
If we are to follow the US, reports of bug freedom, like the one that
came from the Newcastle Building Society should become more frequent as
the year proceeds.
Analysis, p7
Evaluation and analysis by CARMA International. Cuttings supplied by the
Broadcast Monitoring Company. ’What The Papers Say’ can be found at:
www.carma.com.
