Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.
Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.
Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.
Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.
Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.
More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.
Vicki Dutton (or Vicky Dutton) was a fashion pioneer. Dutton was married to an Irish-born British civil servant working under the first Lee Kuan Yew administration of a self-run Singapore. She was a Malay woman living in Singapore.
Singapore was recovering from the Japanese occupation, but there were still a large amount of social and economic problems:
Poor housing and overcrowding
Unemployment
Poor labour relations
Organised crime
These challenges also provide opportunity for some people. And so Singapore saw the start of a vibrant media and fashion industry.
Bright lights, big city
The Singapore of Vicki Dutton had been moving at a rate of knots and the only constant was change.
Growth and peak
What we think of as modern Singapore is a relatively recent construct. When Sir Stamford Raffles arrived on behalf of the British Empire in 1819, the population was about a 1,000-strong. Of which only a few dozen were ethnic Chinese. In the next five years the population grew ten-fold. Two years later and there were move Chinese than Malays due to migration. From the end of the first world war to the beginning of the second world war, Singapore actually declined in importance as the US and Japan rose to prominence.
During the second world war, Singapore suffered horribly with the regimented Sook Ching killings taking place across Singapore and Malaya designed to eliminate resistance before it took hold.
Remaking
The second world war shattered the illusion of the British Empire in Asia, as its military might was taken to pieces by the army, navy and air force of Imperial Japan. But this opened up new possibilities for Singaporeans. Europeans were no longer a breed apart. This drove a re-examination of local traditions by Singaporeans.
Post-war saw a rebuilding of lives and preparing for a Singaporean future. By 1959 Singapore was self-ruled.
But this process brought turmoil including riots and communist terrorism. Singapore joined the newly created state of Malaysia, but a few years later was ejected.
Re-examination of local traditions
Vicki Dutton was a woman of Malay heritage married to an Irish man. She was cosmopolitan enough to move within the upper-echelons of Singapore society at the time. She had also travelled to Europe and had access to the latest trends coming out of events like London and Paris fashion weeks.
In edition, the regularly contributed to Singapore’s fashion magazines as a writer.
Dutton was able to model her own creations as well as having the talent to design and make them.
While she did have privilege, she also held progressive views, commenting that locals could be as pretty and equally well dressed as Europeans. Their skin tone being similar to many Spanish people. She became famous in Singapore and beyond for blending local styles with western cuts. The cinched waist popularised by Christian Dior quickly found its way into Dutton’s work that then clothed the well-to-do of Singapore and beyond. Dutton was famous for interpreting the kebaya and the sarong for a fashionable look.
Vicki Dutton’s creation made it to Paris fashion week, thanks to a Singapore government that wanted to promote the country and its nascent industries.
Over time, Vicki Dutton’s contribution to Singaporean fashion was forgotten and only recently brought back to the attention of the public through Channel News Asia’s programming focusing on forgotten pioneers.
You can even see Dutton’s influence in the work Pierre Balmain did in 1972 to create the iconic kebaya and sarong based uniform for Singapore Airlines.
Tragedy of Pulau Senang
Pulau Senang is today largely peaceful. As an island off the coast of Singapore it is now used as a live firing range by Singapore’s air force and their navy. The name translates to ‘isle of ease’. Back in 1960, the island served a very different purpose. A work camp for organised criminal gang members was set up by Vicki Dutton’s husband at the request of the Singapore government. This was supposed to serve a few purposes
Ease the over-crowding at Changi prison
Give criminals an opportunity to return to society
Provide useful skills
The first few years of the camp was successful and apparently rehabilitated some 200 secret society members. Here’s what Reuters said about what happened on July 18, 1963:
A BRITISH PRISON SUPERINTENDENT AND THREE GUARDS WERE HACKED TO DEATH AND 28 WARDERS WERE WOUNDED IN 30 MINUTES OF SADISM AND TERROR ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON IN THE SUN-BAKED PENAL ISLAND OF PULAU SENANG (ISLE OF EASE), TEN MILES FROM SINGAPORE.
A HEAVY ESCORT OF POLICE TOOK DETAINEES AWAY FROM THE ISLAND AFTER MORE THAN 300 OF THEM WENT ON AN INHUMAN RAMPAGE. THEY GOUGED OUT THE EYES OF MR DANIEL S. DUTTON, THE SUPERINTENDENT, AND HACKED HIM SLOWLY TO DEATH WITH NATIVE GARDENING TOOLS. MR TAILFORD, HIS DEPUTY, WAS STABBED IN THE TEMPLE AND IS IN A SINGAPORE HOSPITAL IN A SERIOUS CONDITION.
One can only imagine the turmoil this must have caused. Dutton eventually left Singapore behind and lived for much of the rest of her life in the United Kingdom.
I eagerly anticipated reading A Hackers Mind, being a long-time follower of Bruce Schneier’s blog. A Hackers Mind caters to the well-informed individual. Schneier commences by defining what constitutes a hacker, delving into the essence of hacking and its widespread prevalence.
Subsequently, Schneier takes us on a journey into a hackers mind, guiding us through fundamental hacks targeting:
ATMs (automatic teller machines or cash machines)
Casinos
Airline frequent flier miles
Sports systems
Financial networks
The legal realm
Politics
Through these examples, Schneier aims to illustrate the parasitic nature of hacks on the systems they target, offering various techniques to impede or render them unfeasible. In doing so, he makes a broader socio-political statement about how the very foundation of the economy and society is continuously ‘hacked’.
The implication is that power lies in a hacker’s mind being applied to the systems that govern our lives. And that with the right mindset and ‘hack’ the ordinary person can turn the tables on those in power.
When this happens it makes great film or television. (A classic example of this would be ITV’s People vs. Post Office which told the story of postmasters combating wrongful prosecutions due to software defects. The reality was that in that particular case, it actually took the media coverage around the TV drama being shown to actually start moving the needle.)
Schneier in his book recognises that over time societies have evolved to become more equitable over time. He also attributes late stage capitalism to the hackers mindset, mixed with resources and technical capability in law or finance. The book is designed to wake the public up with a view to them also developing a A Hackers Mind and hacking the system back to equilibrium.
It’s an interesting light read, but I think VR pioneer and author Jaron Lanier writes better books focusing on the inequities inherent in the intersection of technology, culture and society. A great example of this is his book Who Owns The Future?
I don’t think Schneier gets close to inspiring his desired outcome with A Hacker’s Mind, but if you want something above the usual airport reading then it gets a thumps up from me, but it won’t be staying on my book shelf for me to re-read it at a later date. For more book reviews and recommendations go here. For recommendations of non-fiction books in particular go here.
Six hundred pairs of Nikes in a custom-built house
The six hundred pairs of Nikes are owned by a Japanese lady who now is head of marketing for Ugg in Japan. Previously she’d spent over 20 years in sales and marketing for Nike. Her house was designed around her shoe collection and the double height ceiling in the room to host the six hundred pairs is worth watching for alone. There are more than six hundred pairs. Some of the stories about the six hundred pairs of shoes are fascinating such as how Nike Air Max 95s were responsible for thefts and muggings in Japan.
Tom Ford
Everyone needs a Tom Ford in their life. From personal life hacks to interior design and grooming all in the space of a few minutes. This sounds as if the interview as done around about the time that Ford was bowing out of his fashion and beauty businesses.
Gibbs SR toothpaste
Along with Close Up and Aquafresh; Gibbs SR toothpaste was one of the toothpastes I remember most from childhood. Unilever bundled it eventually into Mentadent and it was quietly taken off the UK market in 2018.
I didn’t realise that Gibbs SR toothpaste was the first advertisement shown on British television. UK law had changed the previous year allowing for commercial television. The creative behind the ad was Brian Palmer of Young & Rubican (now VML).
So, I was listening to the Uncensored CEO podcast Jon Evans when he had Les Binet and Sarah Carter on. One of them mentioned that the above ad was tested recently and scored top scores. It might be novelty, but is unlikely to be nostalgia that drove this test score. What’s more interesting it that Y&R managed to get the creative so high performing decades before the kind of tools that we have now.
Hyper-reality
Keiichi Matsuda took what Apple would call spatial computing to its logical conclusion in this 7 year old film HYPER-REALITY. There are a number of clever aspects to it. Watch when the device reboots in the supermarket and the glyph wearing criminal who escapes identification by the system.
In reality, hardware will restrict how useable that these products will be. Which is the reason why the Apple Vision Pro looks so cumbersome. More related content here.
John Glenn
Great interview with Mercury and Apollo programme astronaut John Glenn covering different aspects of his experience as an astronaut. We hear how astronauts became so involved in the engineering and safety aspects of the Mercury and Apollo programmes.
Welcome to my February 2024 newsletter which marks my 7th issue. I hope that your year of the dragon is off to a great start.
The number 7 is a bit of a mixed bag, depending on how you look at it. In the old testament, the 7th heaven is where God’s throne is, alongside the angels. It had been considered a place of happiness, hence Gwen Guthrie’s Seventh Heaven. In Mandarin, the number is considered generally a positive thing, the number is a homophone for ‘arise’ and ‘life essence’. But that’s only half the story.
Indications of 7’s unlucky nature include the seventh month in the lunar calendar being a ‘ghost month’. In Cantonese, it is a homophone for a vulgar way of saying penis. I hope your February wasn’t a dick of a month.
For film buffs it’s almost 28 1/2 years since the transgressive crime thriller Seven was released. It was a break out hit and became the seventh highest grossing film of 1995, behind Die Hard with a Vengeance, Toy Story and Apollo 13. It beat out other films like Braveheart in box office earnings, but Braveheart ran away with the Oscars.
Let’s hope that feng shui master Michael Chiang is correct in terms of the positive energies from the year of the dragon.
New reader?
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things I’ve written.
FOOH – and the ethical and marketing challenges it presents with a thought experiment harking back to the golden age of pornography.
Technonationalism – how current technological developments mirror the cold war and the 20th century Asian economic miracle.
Innovation signalling – how innovation is used by brands for show, rather than for genuine progress.
Pipes by Yahoo – a remarkable web service that also causes us to reflect on the post modern web of today.
Hong Kong measurements – how something as simple as measurement units are a melding of culture, history, modernity and politics in a time of change.
Y2K was always more than a fashion phase, but it seems to have faded from the zeitgeist which means the fashion takes have no context. Here’s a bit of context for you.
Books that I have read.
What the Taliban Told Me by Ian Fritz. Fritz writes really, really well, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to complete his personal memoir about his upbringing, service in Afghanistan onboard an AC-130 gunship and depression. In some ways it reminded me of Jarhead – Anthony Swofford’s memoirs of his life up to the time of being in the US Marines during the first Gulf War. Swofford’s book came out a decade and a half after his service. Fritz’ book feels much more immediate and without the flashes of humour and beauty that was in Swofford’s book.
Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China by Leta Hong Fincher. This was originally written in 2016, but has been updated to incorporate changes over subsequent years. It shows how government policy, ethnographic-nationalism, law enforcement, the legal system, collective punishment and community pressure is applied on modern women. I still find the content covering domestic violence shocking. This isn’t the China of Mao where in theory women hold up half the sky, instead it seems to be on a trajectory that would eventually see it closer to Mao’s view of China’s population, or Ceaușescu’s Decree 770 and other associated pro-natalist laws. This is a world away from the equally oppressive one-child policy, which had been brought in to deal with population related problems from the Mao-era.
The Big Book of Cyberpunk edited by Jared Shurin. I am huge fan of cyberpunks better known authors: William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling. This collection of 100+ stories written by authors from 25 countries is a mixed bag, but that’s no bad thing.
Things I have been inspired by.
J Walter ThompsonWunderman Thompson VML Intelligence launched their annual Future 100 report. It’s a great read and its continuity over the years makes it stand apart from the plethora of trends reports that get published every year. Their trends which intersect luxury and health are particularly interesting:
Althluxe
Bioharmonizing spas
Longevity resorts
Idyllic idleness
Author Cory Doctorow’s essay for Locus magazine plays devil’s advocate in considering the future of the crypto-based ecosystem and artificial intelligence is well worth a read. Doctorow speculates on what kind of bubble artificial intelligence is likely to become and the effect that its deflation may have. He draws on the outcomes of tech bubbles in the past including the dot com bubble and the telecoms bubble that accompanied it.
Just Conecting published a report on what seems to work on LinkedIn. It’s an interesting snapshot of what works at the moment, I am sure things will change over time as the algorithm evolves. Much of the focus seems to be orientated towards personal branding over business brands.
Over at Japan House, I marvelled at the exhibition Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Sara River. The Ainu are native to Japan’s northern islands and have survived for millenia in the extreme cold. Historically they were discriminated against, but now there is an appreciation of their culture. The art pieces on display are unique in their design, but share the attention to detail one sees in other Japanese work.
The Science Museum has an amazing exhibition on: Zimingzhong 凝时聚珍: Clockwork Treasures from China’s Forbidden City. Prior to the opium wars, UK craftsmen created fantastic clockwork-powered creations that were given as gifts to the emperor of China. The exhibition finishes on June 2, 2024. I went during Chinese new year. I came away with a refreshed appreciation of modern watchmaking complications, in particular devices like ‘minute repeaters’.
NS Lyons magnus opus The China Convergence is read by Regina Doman. Lyons’ premise is that western systems have converged with China’s approach to governance due to the rise of the technocrat. In this respect his perspective is similar to that shared by documentary maker Adam Curtis. Like Curtis, Lyons’ The China Convergence asks uncomfortable questions of us. Are we basically a less extreme version of the same system to the presses of mass and scale?
While we’re talking China, I can recommend the China Update YouTube account that provides a concise summary of Chinese business news and economic analysis garnered from a wide range of Chinese and western business publications.
Finally, IPSOS ongoing collection of reports this time reflects on the power of nostalgia. This time focusing on youth culture from cottage-core, Barbie mania, vinyl to vintage technical clothing and streetwear and the underlying drivers behind it. Why Nostalgia Is So ‘Fetch’ Right Now by Samira Brophy is well worth a read.
2023 Global Trends Report by ACROSS Health is a great census of healthcare professional media preferences and insight into omnichannel communications trends for pharmaceutical marketing. It is good reading and indicates that pharma clients who have an excessive efficiency bias and want to go to digital-only customer journeys will be left behind by peers taking a mixed approach.
Things I have watched.
Agent Hamilton – Carl Gustaf Hamilton is a Swedish answer to James Bond or Jack Ryan. Hamilton was the main character in a series of books written by a former investigative journalist, Jan Guillou, who served time in Sweden for exposing illegal intelligence operations. Guillou wrote the first Hamilton book in 1986 and the last one in 2012.
Blake and Mortimer – if you’re a fan of TinTin, you’ll like Blake and Mortimer as both come from the French -Belgian comic tradition. This cartoon series is based on the adventures of an eminent Scottish scientist and a British military intelligence officer in mid-century Europe. It’s nice light entertainment and I can recommend the graphic novels as well of which there are now 30+ stories including the Before Blake and Mortimer off-shoots. The authors have also wrote other excellent series like XIII.
Useful tools.
Audio Hijack 4.3
Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack has been a mainstay on my Mac for far more years than I care to mention. It was great for everything from recording conference talks to putting together quick and dirty talk tracks that concepting films can be cut too. Version 4.3 features OpenAI’s Whisper transcription software that can cater to transcribing dozens of languages. I have found it better than tools like Otter.ai for me.
Krisp
Krisp.ai is a freemium service providing intelligent noise cancellation, call transcripts and meeting notes all in one. It works with Teams, Google Meetup, Slack and Zoom.
Obsidian
Just like Evernote back in the day, Obsidian has become a bit of a cult app for those that find it really useful. At its heart, it is a note taking and writing application. It will sync between desktop and mobile devices, but that costs $8/month – which is expensive. I haven’t been using it beyond a quick trial, as I have a well-defined set of tools that I use and Obsidian didn’t really slot in well. But I can appreciate the value of it to others. One thing I would be leery of, if you are moving to Obsidian is the cottage industry in snake oils salespeople hawking the ‘ultimate’ online course for Obsidian. Instead check out Obsidian’s own community pages of courses.
Todoist
Todoist is a shareable to do list that places it somewhere between quick and dirty project management and personal productivity. I am giving it a try following a recommendation from a friend. It’s not about whether products like this are good or not, but usually if it fits into your style of working, so your mileage may vary.
Early last year, fashion started to pillage the late 1990s and early 2000s for fashion inspiration, which became a Y2K trend on social platforms and in the fashion media. But this divorced Y2K from its original meaning. Y2K was technologist short hand for a calendar problem in a lot of legacy systems that were designed around a two digit date for years.
The rise of micro-processors had meant that the world had more computers, but also more computer control of processes from manufacturing to building air conditioning systems.
The HBO documentary Time Bomb Y2K leaned into the American experience of Y2K in an Adam Curtis type archival view, but without his narrative.
Millennium layers
There was so much to unspin from the documentary, beyond the Y2K bug, including the largely alarmist commentary. The run-up to the millennium had so many layers that had nothing to do with Y2K, but were still deeply entwined with anxiety around what might happen with Y2K.
This included:
Internet adoption and more importantly the idea of internet connectedness on culture through the lens of cyberpunk – which in turn influenced the spangliness of fashion around this time and the preference for Oakley mirror shades that looked as if they were part of the wearer. The internet was as much a cultural construct and social object as it was a communications technology. It memed AND then got people online.
Telecommunications deregulation. In the United States the Telecommunications Act of 1996, saw a levelling playing field be set out and allow for new entrants across telecoms networks to television. They also defined ‘information services’ which internet platforms and apps fitted into giving them many freedoms and relatively few responsibilities. You had similar efforts at telecoms deregulation across what was then the EEC. This saw a rise in alternative carriers who then drove telecoms and data commuunications equipment sales, together with a flurry of fibre-optic cables being laid. There was a corresponding construction of data centres and ‘internet hotels‘ to provide data services. With these services came an expectation that the future was being made ‘real’. Which in turn fed into the internet itself as cultural phenomenon. The provision of new data centres, opportunities for computer-to-computer electronic data interchange (EDI) and services that can be delivered using a browser as interface also drove a massive change in business computing.
An echo boom of the hippy back to the land movement, many of the people involved in that movement were early netizens. Hippy favourites The Grateful Dead had been online since at least 1996 and were pioneers in the field of e-commerce. The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (or The WeLL) had founders from hippy bible The Whole Earth Catalog. There was also a strong connection through Stewart Brand to Wired magazine. Long time ‘Dead lyricist Jon Perry Barlow created a Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace – a libertarian totem for netizens up to the rise of social media platforms like Facebook.
Millennial religious fervour. The Heaven’s Gate cult committed ritual suicide in 1997, and even posted about it on their website. The disastrous FBI showdown with the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas had happened four years earlier and even today is a point of discussion amongst right-leaning Americans.
The confluence of noise around Y2K drove some anxiety and a lot of media chatter.
Advertisers did their bit to fuel insecurities as well.
However by October 1999, American consumers who responded to a poll by the Gallup Organisation were pretty confident that glitches would be unlikely
55% considered it unlikely ATMs would fail.
59% believed direct deposit processing wouldn’t be a problem.
60% said they felt that temporary loss of access to cash was unlikely.
60% believed credit-card systems were unlikely to fail.
66% felt that problems with check processing were unlikely.
70% had received Y2K-readiness information from their banks.
90% were confident their bank was ready for Y2K.
39% said they would definitely or probably keep extra cash on hand.
Y2K: More Signs of the Time | Computerworld (January 10, 2000)
Experts had felt that the Y2K challenge had largely been beat, but some prudent advice was given. I worked for a number of technology clients at the time including telecoms provider Ericsson and enterprise software company SSA Global Technologies. I had to keep my cellphone with me in case anything went wrong and we would have to go into crisis mode for our clients. Needless to say, I wasn’t disturbed during my night out at Cream by THAT call.
Technology experts like Robert X. Cringely were rolled out to advise consumers on prudent precautions. Have a bit of cash in your wallet in the unlikely event that card merchant services don’t work at your local shop. Have some provisions in that dont need refrigeration in case there is a power cut. And a battery or solar powered radio just in case.
All of these are still eminently sensible precautions for modern-day living.
Why were we ok?
The warning
There were several people who voiced warnings during the 1990s. Some of the most prominent were Ed Yourdon and Peter de Jager.
Risk management
During the 1990s company auditors were informing boards that they had to address Y2K. Failure to follow this would affect their ability to trade. Their public accounts wouldn’t be signed off and there would be implications for the validity the insurance policies need to run a business.
Approaches
IT professionals took Y2K very seriously, which meant that there was little to no impact. Some academics such as UCL’s Anthony Finkelstein posited that the problem was taken too seriously, though it is easier to say that in retrospect. There were a number of approaches taken to combat the risk of failure due to Y2K. In order of least to most ambitious they were:
Systems testing
Rip and replace
Recode
Systems testing
The Russian military had tested their systems for vulnerability to the millennium bug and announced this in the last quarter of 1999. Meanwhile businesses were often passing the testing out to contractors like Accenture with teams based in India, the former Soviet Union or the Philippines. There was a thriving market for auditing software to check if applications used two-digit dates or not. One of these was Peregrine Systems ServiceCenter 2000 Y2K Crisis Management software.
Testing highlighted problems at Oak Ridge Laboratories who process American nuclear weapons, the alarm systems at Japanese nuclear power stations and some kidney dialysis machines.
Problems would then be addressed by ripping and replacing the systems or recoding the software.
Rip and replace
Apple used Y2K as a sales tool to get Macs into businesses, including this campaign from early 1999 where the HAL computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey featured in Apple’s Super Bowl advert.
Two years earlier IBM CEO had the company re-orientate an offering that he called e-business. There was snazzy advertising campaigns ran over an eight year period.
Mainframes and high powered UNIX workstations became internet servers running multiple instances of Linux. IBM Consulting learned as they went building the likes of internet retailer Boxman (which would go bust due to IBM’s cack-handed software and the rise of Amazon).
Timely replacement of business systems with e-business systems, paired with new personal computers like the latest Apple Mac allowed the firm to avoid Y2K and make speedier approaches in digitising their businesses.
German enterprise software company SAP launched SAP Business Connector in association with webMethods in 1999, this provided an integration and migration layer for SAP and other business software applications. It also allowed the business software to be accessed using a web browser and for it to trigger business processes like email updates.
Articles (like Robertson & Powell) highlighted the wider business process benefits that could be generated as part of a move to rip-and-replace existing systems with ones that are Y2K compliant. Reducing the amount of systems in place through rationalisation as part of Y2K preparation would then provide benefits in terms of training and expertise required.
Recode
Where rip and replace wasn’t an option due to cost, complexity or mission criticality recoding was looked at as an approach. For PC networks there were a few off the shelf packages to deal with low level BIOS issues
IntelliFIX 2000 by Intelliquis International, Inc. Their product would check hardware, DOS operating system, and software. This version was free and ran a pass/fail test. The full version, which could be purchased for $79, would report the issues and permanently correct date problems with the BIOS and the CMOS real-time clock. In 1999, Stewart Cheifet of the Computer Chronicles rated the product as a very good all-in-one solution for hardware and software.
National Museum of American History: Y2K collection
Products similar to IntelliFIX included Catch/21 by TSR Inc.
Longtime software makers like Computer Associates and IBM provided large companies with tools to audit their existing code base and repair them. IBM’s software charged $1.25 per line inspected. OpenText estimate that there 800 billion lines of COBOL language code out there. So having one of these tools could be very lucrative at the time.
You might have mainframe code on a system that might not have been altered since the 1970s or earlier. Programmers in the developed world who had skills in legacy languages were looking at the end of their career as more of this work had been outsourced to Indian software factories saw Y2K as a last hurrah.
COBOL is still very robust and runs business processes very fast, so is maintained around the world today.
Y2K impact
Professor Martyn Thomas in a keynote speech given in 2017 documented a number of errors that occurred. From credit card reading failures and process shut downs to of false positive medical test results across the world. But by and large the world carried on as normal.
Academic research (Anderson, Banker et al) suggests that the most entrepreneurially competitive companies leaned hard into the Y2K focus on IT and used the resources spent to transform their IT infrastructure and software. Garcia and Wingender showed that these competitive returns were shown to provide a benefit to publicly listed company stock prices at the time.
There were also some allegations that software companies and consultants over-egged the risks. Hindsight provides 20:20 vision.
IT spending dropped dramatically during 2001 and 2002, and by the middle of 2003 technology started to see replacement of software and equipment bought to address Y2K. But the US department of commerce claimed that was no more than a transient effect on economic growth. This was supported by the Kliesen paper in 2003, which posited that the boom and subsequent economic bust was not as a result of Y2K preparation.
