The millennium bug should not be dismissed as an invented panic merely because the worst failures did not occur. Older programs handled dates shortsightedly, including systems that society relied on to keep working. Serious disruption remained possible, but extensive preventive work addressed the faults before the date change. Successful prevention can make a real technological risk look exaggerated after the fact.
Notable Point · 21:37-21:59
Why the millennium bug did not become a disaster
A brief aside explains that the Year 2000 problem was a genuine systems risk whose limited visible impact reflected extensive preventive work.