Our world is increasingly interconnected and interspersed throughout the real and digital spheres. There no longer is a question about when you are going to fix your computer. You have to get your computer fixed or else you won’t be able to talk to your friends or get your work done. It didn’t always used to be like this, of course. In times past, computers were mostly tools that most businesses could use if they had the money. They certainly weren’t a necessity back in the eighties and nineties like they are today. Back then, the internet and computers in general were seen as a scary monolithic entity that were difficult to get into and even more difficult to become knowledgeable about. It wasn’t like it is today, now that we are all some sort of computerized digital fans that sort of know exactly what we are doing. This is all true but this doesn’t mean we can easily fix our own computers. After all, computers have done nothing except get more and more advanced in the past twenty years and have long since left the layperson behind in terms of understanding how they work. For most of us, computers may as well be magic boxes that let us watch television and talk to people far away. This is where it support companies come into play. IT security solutions, it support in general, it consultation, these are all subsets of the IT industry which has grown by leaps and bounds in the last twenty years. But where did the IT support company begin and where are IT support companies going to go in the future?
The Beginning of IT
At the dawn of the internet and computer age, computers were both harder and easier to use. The new generations growing up online might not realize this but computers once did a lot less than they do today. A computer in the mid nineties probably did about one eighth of what computers can do today or even less. They have crude text documents, maybe a game or two and were linked mostly for niche social networking and business transactions. The high powered, stock ticker type digital networks we are used to now just didn’t exist back then. Quite paradoxically, though the computers were far less complicated they were far harder for people to figure out how to use. There had never been anything like them before in mainstream society and people were understandably apprehensive about diving into the digital world when there were so many problems in the real world.
Where IT Came From
In this new digital climate, a few things needed to happen before IT support companies could really take off. The very first thing is that people needed to grasp the basics of a computer and how it might need to be fixed. They needed to know what the problem was before they called the IT support companies to come and fix it. The companies back then were just starting out how to fix computers within homes which sounds strange but it makes sense in context. For most of the eighties and early nineties, computers were confined mostly to business spaces. Most networked computers were for official business use and nothing else, crunching numbers, keeping track of profits. It took awhile for computers to actually start to migrate over to residential areas where individuals could use them.
IT companies and the Future
Of course, IT support companies today are all very efficient and know exactly what it is they have to fix. People today tend to be more tech savvy in general and can figure out what has gone wrong and generally describe it in a way that makes sense. Sure, sometimes it can even be hard for very efficient IT support companies to figure out what has gone wrong. People can be clumsy after all and get into weird situations with all of their home tools, the computer included. But, for the most part, it companies focus on repairing and maintaining and upgrading the networks that make our high powered digital lifestyles possible. Who knows what the future could hold?