The President said, "It seems unbelievable that it's only 535 days from now, at the stroke of midnight when we will usher in the New Year, a new century, a new millennium . . . . It is fitting, it more than a little ironic, that this same stroke of midnight will pose a sharp and signal test of whether we have prepared ourselves for the challenges of the Information Age."
The President talked about the worldwide cost of tens of billions if not hundreds of billions of dollars. And the Vice President discussed the hundreds of millions of embedded chips, many of which would not accurately read the year 2000.
These comments, and many other comments, were a positive sign. The Y2K problem needs to be addressed by politicians in a way that brings the nation together to face the problem and keeps it from becoming a partisan issue.
At the same time, we must realize that there was a lot of public relations phrases used last week that are not based in reality. For example, there was a lot of talk of the federal computer systems becoming Y2K compliant well before January 1. Remember that this is the same government that was given the grade of F by Congressman Steve Horn recently. Most observers do not believe that even the mission critical computer systems will be compliant by the year 2000, much less all the other computing systems of the federal government.
So last week's press conference was a good first step, but much more needs to be done.
I'm Kerby Anderson of Probe Ministries, and that's my opinion.
© 1998 Probe Ministries International