Hear me out: maybe we should have just let Y2K happen?

Lately, when I find myself feeling a little too calm about things, I’ve taken to reading the Reddit subreddit r/singularity to help swing my equilibrium back to its natural state of intense panic. This is a place where activity has flourished in recent months, as community members feverishly discuss the day’s ever-increasing developments in artificial intelligence and casually argue about the date they expect computers to officially exceed all human control.

“AGI by the end of 2025” predicted a top ranking post on the subreddit this week, referencing the stage of singularity when “artificial general intelligence” – the point at which computers can perform any intellectual task that a human can – is reached. The excitement was caused by OpenAI’s announcement that its o3 system can now reason through maths, science and computer programming problems, which are three things I definitely can’t do.

We had the chance to give computers less control, and instead we gave them more.Credit: iStock

It got me thinking: we should have just let the Y2K bug win, hey? There we were, exactly 25 years ago, gifted with a date glitch that would’ve sent us warmly back to the 1900s, when life was simple and butter was churned in the backyard. But instead we panicked, worried that nuclear plants would melt down, planes would fall out of the sky, ATMs would erase all our savings, and like Bill Pullman in Independence Day we chose to fight.

Now, 25 years on and with robot overlords breathing down our necks, it feels like a fork-in-the-road moment where we Robert Frosted the wrong way. We had the chance to give computers less control, and instead we gave them more. Dummy move!

Perhaps because I’d just turned legal drinking age, or perhaps because I was watching Buffy religiously instead of following the news, I don’t remember feeling too concerned about the Y2K bug. What did I care if computers thought it was 1900 instead of 2000? Life across those 100 years wasn’t that different. In 1999, I still walked everywhere; I still did school exams in pencil; I still developed 35mm film negatives for my day job like Thomas Edison in his laboratory. Computers might’ve been around, but they weren’t such a part of our lives as they are now. I’d go whole days without touching one sometimes, except to play Grim Fandango.

We were so close, as this archival shot from the film Time Bomb Y2K shows.

Not to get all John Lennon, but imagine there were no computers. I wouldn’t miss them. I’d be sitting by a river bank right now, writing this column in salmon blood with my index finger. We’d all be so close to nature we could taste it, like the kid from Into the Wild. Maybe we’d die eating berries, but we’d live eating berries, too.

If computers had died in 1999, we wouldn’t have social media either, the worst experiment in humankind since lobotomies. Instead we’d just have polite conversation with whoever was in our vicinity and/or crushing loneliness, both preferable options.

If Y2K had happened, industry would be thriving too. No computers means no factory closures means no Donald Trump, it’s a simple equation.

And not just manual industries, but creative ones too. If computers had died, music might still be a viable artistic career. I know this because in 1999 it would take me four days to download one Talib Kweli song, whereas today I just skimmed through his full life’s work during a toilet break. No one should have such carefree access to an artist’s entire life work, especially during a bowel movement. It’s not right.

Maps. Street directories. The Yellow Pages. Privacy. Look at all the things we lost because, 25 years ago, we chose to save computers instead. A worthwhile exchange? I don’t know, maps were fun to fold. You can’t fold a GPS, you can just yell at its ignorant directions.

“But what about the hospitals?” you’re probably saying. “Hospitals need computers.” Yes, I’m sure computers have saved more lives than the cast of Bondi Rescue, and the result is overpopulation. To paraphrase Paris Hilton, sometimes you just have to leave the party. The people of 1900, aprons splattered in freshly churned butter, understood this.

As you can see, the Y2K bug got an unnecessarily bad rap in 1999. The good news is that we have another chance to get it right in 2038, when at 03:14:08 UTC on 19 January 2038, computer systems running on Unix time will suddenly revert to 20:45:52 on Friday, 13 December 1901. It’s called the Year 2038 Problem, which isn’t as catchy as Y2K, but it’ll do. Butter churning, here I come.

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