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Contact: David Lassner, 956-3501	Air Date: June 15, 1998

Year 2000 Problem Is Serious but Manageable, Panelists Say pt. 1   Just how big a problem is the Year 2000 going to cause in today's highly wired, computer-dependent world? Depends who you are and who you ask. The University of Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies posed that question to three panelists recently. The problem-as most newspaper readers and TV watchers are now aware-is that many computer systems were developed using only two digits for the year. In such systems 1995 is encoded as "95" and 1976 is stored as just "76." Logically, 2001 would be stored as "01." Problem is, it might then be incorrectly interpreted by the computer as 1901. To make matters worse, the user may not see any immediate sign that an error has occurred. Problems have already arisen with some places and the situation can be expected to get more complicated as January 1, 2000, approaches. More on tomorrow's University Report, I'm Tracy Orillo-Donovan.

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