Interview with Kevin Treu

Esmie Fernandez  0:00  

Yep, perfect. Could you start by just telling us about you? What is your background?

Kevin Treu  0:07  

Okay. My name is Kevin Treu. I am chair of the Department of Computer Science. I've been at Furman for 33 years, and chair of the department for 21 years. And I have let's see, I'm originally from Western Pennsylvania. I went to a small liberal arts school called Allegheny College, which is, which is, was always my goal to come back to a small liberal arts college because teaching is my passion. I went to the University of Virginia to get my Master's and PhD, and Furman was the first and only job I've ever had. I came here in 1992 and lots of things have happened in my time at Furman, but, you know, possibly one of the things I'm proud of is having initiated the process of the data analytics minor and created the first data science class at Furman, which is, as you know, the CS 272, so. And I love theater. I love to act and direct, and I love swimming and and I'm for 20 years, I've been age group summer swim coach. So those are some of my outside interests.

Alex Black  1:31  

Alright, so what was your experience with y2k,

Kevin Treu  1:33  

so that's an interesting question. As a as a programmer, I understood very well what the problem was. And I had an interest in like, will this actually be a thing? But I was never really that concerned. I knew lots of I had lots of not only friends, but students. I was, I was at Furman already for seven years. Then so graduate students who had graduated, who were making big bucks off of this, off of and this, in this case, being the panic or the hysteria. And hysteria might not be a good word, because it suggests that it it wasn't real, it was real. So are you familiar with the technical background, the idea of it, okay? So or so, I don't need to describe it, yeah, about the years and how the years, right? So, in the early days of computer science, memory was very, very precious. It was not plentiful like it is now. You couldn't just go to the store and buy a two terabyte, you know, hard disk for your computer. You know, in fact, you don't need to keep this in the podcast. But my first computer I ever bought had a hard disk with 10 megabytes. Okay, I take pictures now that are bigger than 10 megabytes. I still remember I and I consciously thought at the time, that's ridiculous. I'll never fill this up, you know, 10 megabytes and so in times like that. And of course, that was when I was in graduate school. So that was already in the late 80s or early 90s. Before that, in the 50s, 40s and 50s, when computers and programming were invented, it was even more that memory was even more precious than that. So the point being, and again, you've said you understand this already, but the Date field was just two digits, as opposed to four that for the year. So you'd have, you know, 1956 would just be five six. You know, well, it's 2025 so 1925 would be two five. And that would be assumed to be 1925 now here, of course, we are in 2025 so the the the concern was that when New Year's Eve 1999 switched over to 2000 everybody would, all the computers would think it was 1900 and so this is actually a success story where, you know, a decade before that happened, people started realizing, Oh, this is a concern. There's a, I don't know if you've come across this term, but all of the code at that time was considered to be dusty deck. Dusty deck, which is a term for old, antiquated code that still works but but needs to be updated using the latest coding and so on, the latest languages and things like that. And so armies of people were being hired to go back to the dusty deck code and and modify it so that it would have the so that it would have the four digits. So again, I had friends who were who were consultants. But to be honest, now that I think about it. It was mostly former students, students who had graduated in 9394 you know, in that time, and were well into their careers. And it was kind of not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say joke, but it was kind of sort of humorous anecdotes among the programmers community that we are making so much money off of suckers. So I didn't I wasn't cavalier about it at midnight on in 1999 I was intrigued, like, Is anything going to happen? But I wasn't really worried one because I wasn't convinced that it was actually going to cause system failures. Because, again, it's not just the date. If there are all kinds of other fail safes that are built into systems like that. But then, like I said, for years already, there had been smart programmers working on just redoing that code. So instead of two digits for the year, it would have four digits for the year. So I was, I was quite amused by the by the sort of pop culture references to to y 2k and, you know, and how you know, for example, there's a Simpsons episode, if you remember the, if you know, the long running animated show where everything blows up on nine 2k on y2k and they go back to like, caveman days and stuff like that. And there were movies that were made about it and so on. I think most of us who are computer science professionals were not that worried about it. That does it make sense? Does it make sense? What I'm saying there are two factors to it. One is that it probably was never that big of a problem in the first place. But also, there were lots, there was lots of money spent on fixing it ahead of time, so it was absolutely the right thing to do. I couldn't, I couldn't predict what actually would have happened if nobody had paid any attention to it. I don't think that like society would have crumbled or anything.

Esmie Fernandez  6:41  

What do you think the ratio of like hysteria to actual problems?

Kevin Treu  6:45  

Oh, that's a great that's a great question, because I can give you any number that's unverifiable.

I would say that in terms of the the anxiety that was provoked by by y2k it was, it was probably 60 to 65% hype. And then you know, so then you know, 35 to 40% real concern, and and real concern in that case, I don't think is like planes falling out of the sky. It was, it was more little odd things. You know, sometimes when you're Wait, I thought I I thought I saved that file, or I thought I had this much in my bank account. That, of course, is not trivial. If somebody's banking gets, gets, gets messed up. But you know, it would be more little things than than entire systems crashing. I think that's my opinion.

Esmie Fernandez  7:49  

Do you think there's been anything since then that have that's reached that level of panic, like, with maybe AI coming out? Like, for that's the cause that much scare with technology and our culture? 

Kevin Treu  8:16  

Oh, gosh, that's a that's such a good question that I'm afraid I'm not going to have, I'm not going to think of the best possible thing right right now. I mean, AI for sure. And there too, I think there I would actually put the, what did I what? So I said for I said 60 to 65% of it was hype in this, this situation, I would put that quite a bit lower. In other words, that the concern is real is more real. So AI is a fantastic example of of of the the concept at play here is that people can profit off of making other people afraid of things. Okay, so I think there was lots and lots of that in 19 in the 90s, was people who, who had the expertise in programming, who, of course, they had self interest in, in in touting the, oh, you need to hire me to fix your y2k problem. AI is actually a, you know, a potential concern right now, again, there are people who are profiting off of, off of, you know, the end of the world is coming and so on. But if we leave them out, there are lots of things that we have to be concerned about. If you want to pause for a second and let me think about all the things that are, I'm thinking of, all kind of feed into what we now think of as AI. So even in the arts, there were concerns about things called expert systems, which are nothing remotely like the AI that we have. Today, but it would be, what? What if there are no more pilots in planes? You know? What if there are no more doctors who are making decisions? It's all just these expert systems that are making those, those kinds of decisions. And again, those are very valid concerns that are sometimes exaggerated, but, but now with so those would be two other examples, or that would be another example of expert systems. But in a sense, it's not any different from Ai. It's the precursor to the AI that we have now. And then, as soon as I walk back to my office, I think of something else. Well, I mean, there are, there are, you know, we're taking way more than five minutes, but you have to edit this, right? Yes. So there we are, there are lots and lots of smaller scale things, okay, oh, goodness, I knew there was something social media. Yes, one, absolutely social media. And this is one that I am conflicted on myself because I would social when social media became a thing, I hope, fully embraced it, like even before Facebook came out, I was just loving this idea of being connected. There was one short lived social media tool called Six Degrees. You guys are familiar with the six degrees theory that everybody in the world is connected by six degrees or less of relationships. And so there was a, there was a social media site called Six Degrees that basically was trying to prove that, and then it added all kinds of chat rooms and things like that. But you know, you'd list all your friends, and then you could put anybody in there and see how close you were connected. I still think that's a fantastic idea, but it was before its time, so that died out. But the thing is, and I'm not telling you anything you don't know, it hasn't been and it hasn't been until, for me, personally, lots of people have said all along, oh, you know, social media is so impersonal and it separates us, rather than pulls us together. And I was, I was the evangelist for social media for a long time. My theme for computer science, 105 is even social media, but, but in the like the election in 2016 and everything that's happened since then really shows how polarizing social media has been. I mean, devastating to our, to our, to our society. And then that reminds me to throw in. I would throw in mobile devices. Also, I would throw in cell phones. That was the one 2008 or smartphones. Rather, that was in 2008 or so. Again, they come on, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm carrying my computer around in my pocket. This is the best thing ever. And then, of course, now it's, you know, I'm fighting the battle all the time with students on their phones in class. And then you go to what's supposed to be a social event or a party, and everybody's on their cell phones. I bet later, if we go and walk around out there, there'll be half the people with their cell phones and so on. So that's, I think, damaging, I think that's something that, again, to your point, that people have said, this is, watch out, be careful. You know, have sort of started a little bit of a panic about, or a concern about. So anyway, those are some other examples.

Alex Black  13:26  

All right, did you think that Y2k, and what came with it, with all the panic, led to significant effects on the technology industry going forward? Like, do you think because there was all this panic and then nothing ended up happening that it progressed technology and push people to want to push technology further

Kevin Treu  13:43  

So as basically a benefit of the whole thing? Yeah, I think so. I at the very least it brought a lot of new people into the field of computing, you know. So again, people were, this was a this was like a gold rush, people had the opportunity to make money, and so they're like, Oh, I'll, I'll be a, you know, I'll be a computer scientist, or I'll study programming, or what have you, and I can get in on this. So in that sense, although the irony there is that shortly after 1999 and 2000 there was what was called the.com bubble burst, which sort of erodes my point that I'm making is that, well, probably lots of people left at that time too.

The main thought I have is that it would, it would remind me. It would remind people to design for the future so that would be positive. Design their code so that it can be robust for all kinds of changes in the future. I would say that, you know, making memory cheaper, making memory more available, is a benefit, but it didn't really come from that. That was already happening. People are already trying. Trying to innovate and to make different competing technologies better. I would say that it had a positive impact, primarily in that it brought the concept of programming to a jet, to the general to general awareness, and made people aware of the importance of it, and brought lots more people to it. I can't think of something tech. Right off the top of my head. I can't think of something technical about it that was like, well, here was a benefit that came out of it. 

Esmie Fernandez 

Is that all of our questions?

Alex Black   15:35  

our questions? Yeah, so I sort of say, Oh, I yeah,

Kevin Treu  15:44  

in line with this. I'm just thinking this mainly because of our discussion yesterday, in class, in line with sort of social media, kind of separating us and dividing us, the technology around books, I think people are fearful of you know that that physical books won't exist anymore because they'll all just be on, be digital. That will, I think that, I think that the next big thing after AI is going to be in terms of people's fears. It's going to be virtual reality. Yeah, you know, you think about movies 

like ready, player, one or, or, you know, several black mirror episodes where people are, like, just in VR all the time, actually, Wally, the Pixar movie, right? Yeah, just sitting around. So I think that's another probably, you know, you're very astute in mentioning AI, suddenly, so Y, 2k, social media, AI, I think VR will be the next thing. Yeah. But again, that ties into the loss of books and the and the the things that we've cherished as a society in the past,

Esmie Fernandez  17:00  

I feel like our generation is bringing physical media back anyway. Yeah, I know so many people who collect records and have like, like record players and like, that's it's becoming trendy, but it's not just a trend. It's also like helping keep that alive. A lot of artists now will release things on vinyl, and it'll be one of the most profitable things

Kevin Treu 

I have a record player in my office. I have 1989 the tangerine edition. 

Esmie Fernandez  17:28  

That’s awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, I collect records.

Kevin Treu 

I support that. I think that's a great thing. And to buy books,

Esmie Fernandez17:37  

yes, and yeah, similar with books. You know, a lot of people now have Kindles, but still like buying books.

Kevin Treu  17:42  

Yeah, that is exactly me. I've never been the one who's like, Oh, I I shove anything that's I love reading. So I like reading on that poster, I like reading on your computer, whatever, but I also I'll never stop reading. Yes, it's good to have that you can hold. 

Esmie Fernandez  17:58  

Yeah. Thank you so much!

Interview with Ginny Hughes

Esmie Fernandez  0:00  

Okay, perfect. Could you introduce yourself and just tell me a little bit about who you are? Sure

Ginny Hughes  0:06  

My name is Ginny Hughes, and I work at Furman as a career advisor, and I'm actually a Furman alum

Esmie Fernandez

Amazing, and tell me about your experience with y2k.

Ginny Hughes

So at this point, it's a little fuzzy, but I was in my very early, well, I guess middle of my teenage years, when people first started talking about it, and I would say that it just did not make sense to me, and therefore it was scary. So everybody just predicted that nothing would work after the clocks turned in the year 2000 and I would say that I was very scared, but then people wouldn't stop talking about it. And so it just kind of kept going and going, and it did not seem that scary so much as just kind of like part of the conversation after, you know, almost 10 years of talking about it.

Esmie Fernandez  1:10  

And then do you remember, like thinking about it at all at midnight on the December 1999

Ginny Hughes  1:18  

Yes, but very, very briefly. And I actually think I don't know if this is true, but I think at that point I did sort of know a little more, and had maybe a little bit closer connections to people in it. And it just was kind of getting a little more reassurance at that point. So it just seemed kind of like, should I be scared for a blip, and then I decided not to be scared. 

Esmie Fernandez 

Was there a lot of media coverage about it? Was it a big, like, topical conversation? Oh

Ginny Hughes 

yeah, yeah, a lot. It was constant. So it was, yes, it was written about, it was covered, as far as, like, WHAT IT professionals were doing to assure us, yeah, it was just kind of the fabric of everything that was talked about at that time, nice.

Esmie Fernandez  2:16  

And then do you think that y 2k, shaped, kind of how we thought about technology moving forward.

Ginny Hughes  2:24  

Yeah, I mean, I would say that maybe it did become more common for people to think further in advance when it came to trying to predict how things might be used, or what was a what was a backup plan to make it sustainable, if something happened, 

Interview with Christina Harris

Tymber Harris  0:01  

Okay, so let's just start off with you introducing yourself.

Christina Harris  0:06  

Okay, my name is Christina Harris, and I have been in the tech industry now for almost 30 years.

Tymber Harris  0:13  

Awesome. Well, thank you, Christina, for being with us here today. What was your experience with y, 2k and what is your background with technology? Where did it start?

Chrstina Harris 1  0:25  

So my background with technology started with local area networking, which was a thing in the late 90s where within like an office or a building, you would connect different computers to each other. You were connecting them to printers, and then you were connecting them to routers or things like that to get to the internet. But it was more of a local area that we were connecting at the time. 

And from there I went into consulting and software consulting, specifically around the banking industry, which is where I was as y2k was starting, and during the Y2k and so it was very interesting, because that is an industry that has a lot of regulatory and compliance issues. So because you're dealing with people's money, and so the federal government is very involved, and so y2k for that started about three years before 2000 to prepare their systems for the turn of the century. 

Tymber Harris  1:40  

You touched a little bit on your professional experiences leading up to y2k What about personal wise, were you and your friends talking about this new turn of the century coming up? What did you think about it?

Christina Harris  1:52  

No, I think because I was in the tech industry, I had first hand knowledge and experience of all the work that was being done to ensure that things like the Internet and other life impacting systems around the country were not going to shut down right like so I was very involved with all of the work leading up to it. I think it was probably people that did not know a lot about technology, because it was still fairly new and didn't understand all the work that was being done to prevent catastrophic events from happening that were probably most nervous about the event.

Tymber Harris  2:33  

Do you think you yourself, did you believe the internet was going to shut down? Y2 get y 2k, hit? Or what was that like, seeing all the panic around that time.

Christina Harris  2:42  

So no, I personally did not think something as big as the internet was going to shut down, and I was fairly certain that systems like banking systems, government systems, things like that, were going to be up and running because of all the work that had been done to prepare them for it. And there had been tests upon tests upon tests where we had faked the rollover of the clock to the year 2000 to ensure that the systems would not come down. So there was likely smaller systems, or, you know, some very dated software packages that had issues when the clocks rolled over, but things that were very life impacting had been tested, significantly tested, to prepare for.

Tymber Harris  3:32  

Were the people around you pretty similar in that feeling, or was it mixed because kind of a mixed bag of emotions?

Christina Harris 3:39  

It was a very mixed bag, right? So my immediate peers that worked in the industry with me, we all were very comfortable with what was about to happen. But like I said, technology was very new, so friends that were not in the technology industry, family, certainly my parents that you know were only hearing what was on the news, and for the most part, some of them have never, had not even really entered into the internet or world. Yet, they, of course, were buying into all the hype that was happening on the news and everywhere else. And I'm certain they were pulling money out of the bank and you know, all of that. But I was not worried about an impact of it,

Tymber Harris 4:24  

And then just the last question, do you think that Y2k, and what came with it? Do you think it had significant effects on the tech industry moving forward and where we are today?

Christina Harris  4:35  

Oh, absolutely, I absolutely think it did, because it was the first big event in technology that really we like all the code and everything that had been written 20, 3040, years earlier, like we never even stopped and thought about two digit a year, two digit year having that kind of an impact. So when you got to. Developer communities and things like that. You know, we looked at everything, every type of field that we were creating, and you would sort of run a scenario out 100 150 years to try to identify any type of event that might have the same impact. So, yes, I think it had a very big impact on it.

Tymber Harris 5:23  

Awesome. Anything else you just want to add about that y 2k experience or that internet boom, anything else that you want to touch on or that you think would be important to add?

Christina Harris 5:33  

No, I think it was probably the first big event that happened as the internet was starting and technology was really starting to become an everyday thing for people. And so it was really interesting to see the groups of people that were involved in it and their approach to it, and then people that did not know enough about technology, and so they are sort of approached and you know, immediately you had people that were like, I told you technology was bad. I told you things bad things would happen, but yet it still survived, and technology continued to grow. And, you know, but I certainly think there were people that believed that would be the end of what we were starting to see as a technology boom, because they thought, you know, this was just going to prove that computers couldn't survive everything.

Tymber Harris 

Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time today. 

Christina Harris

You're very welcome.