The Great Information Technology Revolution
0Information Technology Evolution
The evolution of the information technology (IT) industry has been one of the most amazing developments in recent history. The advent of computer hardware and software in their most crudest forms begin in the 1940s and 1950s. But, the acceleration of that technology that took place from the mid-1990s until today is nothing short of a miracle before our eyes.
The information technology era between the 1940s and the 1970s was that of really just something more interesting or useful to academics, the largest businesses, and perhaps just the most extreme geeks among us. That really started to change in the 1980s, when computers and software became highly approachable by a vast new audience of those interested in personal technology. Personal hardware and the release of a huge amount of software really changed the landscape in this decade.
The Rise of the IT Revolution
This was the perfect setup for what was to come next in the 1990s with the great technology boom and the christening of the Internet to the general public’s consciousness. In fact, it might be said differently that it was the previous decade that made the next decade possible in terms of the proliferation of software, technical knowledge, and capabilities that would take IT to the next level of historical game changer.
Especially at the mid-1990s mark, technology quickly tipped from being something of a specialty and only for a subset of the population into something that achieved true mainstream success. This was the point where it was not just the bigger or more technically progressive companies that had computers for their workers and the use of internal e-mail systems to communicate. So, the computer turned into a tool that is absolutely part of the workflow of business and no longer a heavy item that took up space on a desk and was used only by certain people and for certain tasks.
The IT Catapult of the 1990s until the Present
The late 1990s really took off with the mainstream push going much further along with the connectivity and possibilities brought about by the Internet to push not only businesses to the next level, but also bring about society at the same time. And, of course, the two are constantly pushing each other. If the population is doing things, it’s only because that businesses are enabling those capabilities to do so and the products and services for the population to consume. All of this happened so quickly and completely that it seems strange to even recall the recent past and when things were different than they are today. A good example of IT services and those that develop great capabilities is Bing Digital, a purveyor of IT services including application development.