Big corporations and government agencies rely on old-fashioned equipment running legacy applications. If those machines don't offer accurate data to, say, the IRS, that could affect every one of us. If by this point you are dumbfounded by the shortsightedness of the early programmers, consider that all the groundwork was laid back in the 1960s. Given the speed at which computing was changing, even back then, and the growing need for systems that could crunch huge assortments of numbers, it was only natural that programmers would do what was possible at the time without worrying about the distant future. The blame can be placed on the computer industry, but that doesn't mean it's entirely the industry's problem.
Date representation is a global problem even without computers.
Too bad programmers didn't have the foresight to use this standard, which is inherently sort-friendly and which would have prevented the Y2K problem. Microsoft claims that Windows NT will handle the Y2K crossover without difficulties and also that its products are Y2K-compliant. Even within this one company, there seems to be no standard. For the majority of PC users, having the right system date is helpful but not essential. Sure, we might not be able to tell which version of a Word document is the most recent, and Quicken might not print our checks the day we need them.