Peter de Jager is a South African-born Canadian computer engineer, best known for his Y2K early 1990s outcry warning,[1] and was the namesake of the de Jager Year 2000 index that began trading on the American Stock Exchange in 1997.[2][3]

De Jager co-authored "Countdown Y2K: Business Survival Planning for the Year 2000[4] and periodically writes for Canada's Municipal World magazine, focusing on Change Management.[5][6]

Y2K

De Jager said: "In 1977, I started as an operator with IBM. First day on the job, I noticed that our systems were using two-digit years. When I bought it up to management, management said, 'Don't worry about it, it isn't going to happen for another 23 years so relax.' I did."[7]

In 1993[8] de Jager wrote a three-page[9] item titled "Doomsday 2000"[10] about the effects of simple date calculations, and "testified before Congress in 1996."[11][9] His initial estimation of "the cost of fixing Y2K at between $50 billion and $70 billion"[12] was subsequently reported to have been too low:[13][10] Numbers like "only" $200 Billion[14] to over $300 Billion[15] proved more correct (for world-wide expenditures), with $120 Billion by USA firms.[3]

De Jager registered and built www.year2000.com,[8] a website he later sold.

Part of his "we don't know in advance what will fail, ... so we have to fix everything" message was quoted by The New York Times in the summer of 1998, which listed examples of cascading effects on "smoke alarms, lighting systems and even thermostats in individual apartments." Fears of elevators that would go up and not come down were reported.

Although de Jager was quoted as not owning "a single share of any year-2000 stock" and that he "never mentioned a vendor from the stage"[16] his year2000.com website had "a list of Y2K consultants and experts;"[8] Forbes magazine wrote that he "makes money selling advertising on his Y2K web site."[3]

In 2009, the Lifeboat Foundation presented de Jager with its Guardian Award, with this citation: "The 2009 Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award has been given to Peter de Jager on the tenth anniversary of Y2K which he helped avert. This award is in recognition of his 1993 warning which alerted the world to the potential disaster that might have occurred on January 1, 2000 and his efforts in the following years to create global awareness of the problem, and the possible solutions. His presentations, articles, and more than 2,000 media interviews contributed significantly to the world’s mobilization to avoid that fate."[17][18]

Personal life

De Jager was born in South Africa in 1955.

De Jager and his wife, Antoinette, have two sons.[16]

References

  1. ↑ Feder, Barnaby J. (October 11, 1998). "Private Sector; The Town Crier for the Year 2000". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved August 29, 2021. the information-age equivalent of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
  2. ↑ Beth Piskora (March 1, 1997). "The Dow decimal system". The New York Post. p. 26.
  3. 1 2 3 Michael Noer (March 12, 1998). "Y2K fear merchants". Forbes. Archived from the original on January 27, 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  4. ↑ Peter de Jager; Richard Bergeon (1998). Countdown Y2K: Business Survival Planning for the Year 2000. ISBN 978-0471-32734-9.
  5. ↑ "Shifting into leadership mode". Archived from the original on February 28, 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  6. ↑ "Somebody will fix it by then". January 2000. Archived from the original on February 28, 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  7. ↑ Brian Becker, Marley McDonald (Directors) (2023). Time Bomb Y2K (Video) (Documentary, 1h 24m). HBO, MAX.
  8. 1 2 3 Jay Romano (August 16, 1998). "Dealing With the Y2K Bug". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 28, 2020. Retrieved February 26, 2020.
  9. 1 2 Eric Andrew-Gee (December 28, 2019). "Y2K: The strange, true history of how Canada prepared for an apocalypse that never happened, but changed us all". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on January 1, 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  10. 1 2 Cory Johnson (December 29, 1999). "Y2K Crier's Crisis". TheStreet. Archived from the original on February 28, 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  11. ↑ and the Canadian parliament
  12. ↑ Dominique Deckmyn (January 1, 2000). "Have we learned nothing from Y2K?". Computerworld. Archived from the original on January 27, 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2020. wrote one of the first warnings about Y2K in Computerworld (Sept. 6, 1993)
  13. ↑ and Gartner Group's "could cost $300 to $600 billion" too high on the upper number.
  14. ↑ report about testimony before the United States Senate's Y2K committee: "Leap Day Had Its Glitches". Wired. March 2000. Archived from the original on November 28, 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  15. ↑ "Y2K: Overhyped and oversold?". Archived from the original on February 28, 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  16. 1 2 Barnaby J. Feder (October 11, 1998). "The Town Crier for the Year 2000". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 14, 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  17. ↑ "Peter de Jager Named Lifeboat Foundation 2009 Guardian Award Winner". Retrieved March 15, 2023.
  18. ↑ Robert J. Sawyer. "Peter de Jager receives Lifeboat Foundation's Guardian Award". Retrieved March 15, 2023.
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