Something lighter
The Time Machine
We built a few pages in the interfaces we grew up supporting. Each one is a joke on the surface and a real conversation underneath, because every era of technology left something behind that somebody is still running today.
The computer arrives in the office
One machine in the corner, running one program that somebody had taken the trouble to learn properly. The spreadsheet and the answering machine were the first two pieces of technology a business could not work without, and both of them were a person's private responsibility rather than a system anybody had designed. A surprising amount of what we are asked to look at still works exactly that way.
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1983
Lotus 1-2-3
A worksheet from 1983, doing the one calculation most owners have never actually run: what a day of downtime costs.
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1985
Answering Machine
An answering machine from 1985, playing back the messages a business phone system leaves behind when nobody has looked at it in ten years.
A machine on every desk
The computers multiplied, a network arrived to join them together, and nobody drew a picture of the result. Security at the door was a keypad with a code that everybody knew and nobody changed. Most of what we are called in to untangle now was assembled in these years, one sensible decision at a time.
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1991
DOS Prompt
A command prompt from 1991. Type a few commands and find out why "the internet is slow" takes three days to answer.
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1992
Oregon Trail
A trail game from 1992, about the supplies nobody thinks to pack: the backup somebody has actually restored from.
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1994
Door Keypad
A door keypad from 1994. The worn keys give the code away, which is the smallest version of a much larger problem.
The office goes online
The business got a modem, a website somebody's nephew built, and an inbox that quickly started carrying real work. Then it got a deadline that everybody could see coming. This is the stretch where the question changed from what a computer can do for you to what happens to you when it stops.
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1996
GeoCities
A homepage from 1996, about the question most owners cannot answer: who controls the domain, the email, and the website.
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1996
Dial-Up
A modem handshake from 1996, and the four things that have to go right before wireless actually works. Five bars only proves the first one.
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1998
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1999
Ask Jeeves
A search engine from 1999, answering the questions people really ask before they hire an IT provider.
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1999
Always on
The connection stopped being something you dialed and became something you assumed. Machines stayed on, mail arrived by itself, and profile pages started asking a question that had not needed asking before, which is who exactly you are dealing with. That last one is still the most useful question to ask about an IT provider.
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2001
Windows XP
Old equipment and unsupported software, and what it takes to replace them on a schedule instead of on the day one of them stops.
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2005
MySpace
A profile page from 2005, with a serious point underneath it: you should know who is answering when you call your IT provider.
Every one of these carries the same offer the rest of the site makes, and the forms on them reach the same people. If you would rather skip the nostalgia, the contact page is the short version.