Conversation:

As I remember it, the Y2K endenvaour started to ramp up in 1998. And yes all of IT / IS where working very hard to ensure no issues would arise from the oversight of our pioneers.
Somebody did of course find the bug and bring it to the attention of the masses.
Kirk

I've been reading this story and it is truly fascinating. I'll tell you now I don't believe it is true but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of it being true because I can't see any fatal flaws in the story. The one you mentioned about him going back to the future but not landing in the exact same universe (but a very very close one) does look like a big problem with the story, but I don’t think this does rule the story out.

Imagine the multitude of universes like a tree, if you went to (current time) a universe very different from us it and looked back at the tree, some even would have split our universe and the one you travel to, e.g. in 1930 Hitler falls down the stairs and dies, but in our universe he narrowly missed slipping and forgot about the near miss, this split would have been when he nearly fell down the stairs. From that moment the two universes split and then end up being very different.

An almost identical universe would have split very recently, maybe only a few seconds ago when someone (fairly insignificant person) makes another decision on the other side of the world.

What you are saying is that why bother sending him back if he won't come back and another John will with IBM5000 in hand anyway? Well if you want him (or him from another universe) to arrive back, this John will only want to return to a very similar universe to his own, and would not return to a universe when they decided not to bother sending John back (why should he?). If you do send him back then there will be other universes which branch off just before he gets into the machine and so are very similar, so to ensure you get a John arriving back you need to make sure you have sent him, so he tries to return to a similar universe as yours and another very similar John (almost identical) arrives back with the computer.

In reply to MoJoRisin777

I've been reading this story and it is truly fascinating. I'll tell you now I don't believe it is true but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of it being true because I can't see any fatal flaws in the story. The one you mentioned about him going back to the future but not landing in the exact same universe (but a very very close one) does look like a big problem with the story, but I don’t think this does rule the story out.

Imagine the multitude of universes like a tree, if you went to (current time) a universe very different from us it and looked back at the tree, some even would have split our universe and the one you travel to, e.g. in 1930 Hitler falls down the stairs and dies, but in our universe he narrowly missed slipping and forgot about the near miss, this split would have been when he nearly fell down the stairs. From that moment the two universes split and then end up being very different.

An almost identical universe would have split very recently, maybe only a few seconds ago when someone (fairly insignificant person) makes another decision on the other side of the world.

What you are saying is that why bother sending him back if he won't come back and another John will with IBM5000 in hand anyway? Well if you want him (or him from another universe) to arrive back, this John will only want to return to a very similar universe to his own, and would not return to a universe when they decided not to bother sending John back (why should he?). If you do send him back then there will be other universes which branch off just before he gets into the machine and so are very similar, so to ensure you get a John arriving back you need to make sure you have sent him, so he tries to return to a similar universe as yours and another very similar John (almost identical) arrives back with the computer.