Two bottles of "Y2K Bug Spray" screen cleaner

Two bottles of ‘Y2K Bug Spray’ computer screen cleaner for year 2000, by Looking Glass Partners LLC, United States, 1999

This product is a scented computer and desk cleaner which was created by Dale Miller and Dan Dyce in the late 1990s as a humorous way to raise awareness of the Y2K problem, also known as the Millennium Bug.

The Y2K problem was the fear that there would be global computing infrastructure collapse at the turn of the century due to issues with internal computer clocks. At this time, many computers only used the last two digits of the year to process the date and so there was concern that '00' would be read as 1900 instead of 2000, impacting systems such as banking, transportation and power plants. There was a lot of speculation around this issue, with some predicting widespread global collapse, while others believed the impact would be minimal. In the end, there was no global computing collapse, mainly due to the awareness of this issue, the work of computing programmers and investment in system updates. There were some issues with card payments, transport ticket systems and bills, among others, but these were all relatively small-scale.

Advertised as a "solution*" (*liquid) to the millennium bug, this product received widespread media attention in the USA and worked as an awareness tool for the looming Y2K problem while also making light of the issue. It was advertised as "a very entertaining gift for anyone worried about or involved with the Y2K issue". This object is representative of the wide range of millennium bug merchandise produced around this time, reflecting broader public interest in and concern around the millennium bug as well as the commercialisation around, and profit from, these attitudes.