Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Into The Void: Much Ado About Nothing

It came and went filled with sound and fury signifying nothing, to take liberties of the words from the immortal bard.

There was much hype about what would happen when the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, becoming Jan. 1, 2000. Guess what, nothing did.

Some had predicted a massive computer collapse, because programmers in the early days of the computer industry designed their date-sensitive programming with two numbers instead of four for the year. This was done to help keep the expense of software programs down in the 1950s, when it cost about $1,000 per kilobyte of disk space.

As time progressed and computers became smaller and faster, no one thought about changing the programming to cover four numbers for the date of a year, with the exception of the Macintosh developers, who designed the Macs with a four number sequence for the year.

In the meantime, time passed and the 1900s started nearing its end. People began looking forward to 2000, and it was realized the majority of computers would revert to 1900 as its base programming date and not 2000.

There was some initial confusion, but the computer industry, along with other businesses and industries, began working to correct the problem a couple of years ago.

On New Year's Eve, at 7 a.m. CST, the national news was showing live feeds from Sydney, Australia, where it was New Year's Day. Because of the time difference and International Date Line, several parts of the world hit Jan. 1, 2000, before others did.

In Sydney a massive fireworks display was going on, with a huge lighted smiley face adorning a bridge. No problems at all were being reported by any of the media.

Most of the rest of the world breathed a collective sigh of relief as there was no disasters or collapses occurring.

Still, in this area, there were people concerned about the so-called Y2K bug.

New Year's Eve dawned with blue skies and mild temperatures for this time of year, but no sign of any type of collapse or disaster because of the new year's arrival.

Of course the law enforcement community had its hands full with those who celebrated a wee bit much, but this had nothing to do with Y2K other than giving those involved another reason to "party hardy."

No, midnight came, midnight went, 1999 became 2000 and the world continued on its course. The sun rose in the east and sat in the west as it has since dawn of time.

Though the world didn't end as some predicted with the arrival of Y2K, there were some ancient tribes of South and Central American Indians who predicted the world will reach its climax on Dec. 23, 2012.

As closely as modern man has been able to decipher from the writings left by the Incas, Aztec and Mayan, along with the Olmec civilizations, with what remains after being plundered by the Spaniards primarily, their mathematics show the world will come to an end on the aforementioned date.

Interestingly, all of these cultures used similar methods in reaching this conclusion, and all were done at different periods of time and different parts of the Americas. None, as best we have been able to learn, had contact with any of the others, and as near as we can figure out, the Olmecs are by far the oldest and today's man knows virtually nothing about them.

Still, their legends all claim the world is currently in its "fifth sun," having been destroyed by the creator on four other occasions.

Whether or not this is true we will never know. According to the Bible, only God knows when the end will arrive and he ain't talking.