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Ignorance Is Bliss?
Many small businesses take ostrich approach to Y2K threat
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Business New Haven
1/11/1999
By: BNH
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Many small-business owners have devised a unique strategy for coping with the looming Year 2000 computer problem: Ignore it, and hope it simply goes away.
A new study by the National Federation of Independent Businesses asked small employers what they planned to spend to overcome the anticipated Y2K bug. Their answers? Twenty-three percent said they planned to spend nothing at all, while an equal number responded that they would spend less than $1,000 to devise solutions to the problem.
While major corporations and governmental bodies race to prepare their computer systems for January 1, 2000, many small-business owners say the cost and complexity of attacking the feared “bug” is simply more than they can bear. Others say they are unsure even exactly how to begin.
Others fear that even stand-alone PCs employed in only the most elementary date- or word-processing functions could be addled when embedded code based on double-digit year recognition interprets the coming year “00” as 1900.
At the extreme are alarmists who fear the century's turn may disable virtually every major digital system throughout society, rendering useless everything from jetliners to elevators.
Only seven percent of small-business owners reported that they would invest more than $25,000 in a Y2K remedy.
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