Lordy, Lordy, Look Who's Forty: A Trip Back to 1986 Business Technology

In 2026, we spend most of our days managing cloud architecture, deploying automated security patches, and chatting with AI bots. If we dial the clock back exactly 40 years to 1986, however, business technology wasn't just a different world; it was a different dimension.

In 1986, the cloud that we use for business wasn’t even an option. In fact, the cloud was something that ruined your weekend golf plans. We thought it would be cool to take a look at what some of the cutting-edge business technology looked like if you walked into an office 40 years ago.

The Desktop 

In 1986, the personal computer was finally making headway inside of corporate workplaces; it just wasn’t the sleek, silent laptop you use today. Let’s take a trip back to the mid-80s and talk about some of the technology you might have seen.

• The hardware - The IBM PC XT and the newly minted Compaq Deskpro 386 were the kings of the cubicle. A fast machine ran at 16 MHz (no, not GHz) and featured a massive 40 MB hard drive.
• The display - Forget the high-resolution monitors you use today. You were likely staring at a heavy, flickering CGA or EGA monitor that displayed a whopping 16 colors, if you were lucky.  At this point, most people were still working in Green Screen monochrome.
• The storage - Floppy disks were actually floppy. The 5.25-inch disk was the standard, holding about 360 KB of data. Moving a large file meant carrying a stack of plastic squares across the office in a color-codex Rolodex-style carrier. 

The Software Suites

There was no auto-save and certainly no real-time collaboration. If two people needed to work on the same budget, they took turns sitting at the computer. Here are some of the software workers of the era used.

• Word processing - WordPerfect was the titan of the era. It was a text-heavy environment where you had to memorize Function Key combinations to do something as simple as bolding a word.
• Spreadsheets - Before Excel dominated the world, Lotus 1-2-3 was the killer app that convinced businesses they actually needed computers.
• The OS - You didn't point and click much. You typed. MS-DOS 3.2 was the standard, requiring users to know commands like DIR, COPY, and DEL. Windows 1.0 existed, but in 1986, it was largely considered a slow, clunky novelty.

The Pre-Internet Dark Ages

This is the hardest part for professionals under 30 to grasp: The office was an island.

• Email - It existed, but mostly on internal mainframes or through services like BITNET. For most, sending a memo meant typing it, printing it on a Dot Matrix printer (the ones with the perforated paper edges you had to tear off), and putting it in a physical In-Box.
• The fax machine - 1986 was the beginning of the Fax Revolution. At the time, it was the height of high-speed transmission; sending a grainy black-and-white image over a phone line in about 60 seconds was considered pure sorcery.
• Research - If you had a technical problem, you didn't Google it. You opened a 400-page printed manual or called a guy who had been at the company for 20 years.

The IT Professional's Life

Back then, being an IT Guy meant being a literal mechanic. You spent your days:

• Configuring jumpers - Manually setting pins on physical circuit boards to tell the computer how much RAM it had.
• Managing the room - If your company was big enough, you had a mainframe or Minicomputer that sat in a refrigerated room and required a dedicated professional to maintain.
• Physical security - Cybersecurity was mostly about locking the office door so nobody stole the $5,000 computer.

Looking back at 1986 reminds us that technology is a journey of removing friction. We've moved from commands to clicks to conversations. While we might complain when the Wi-Fi drops for thirty seconds today, in 1986, you'd spend thirty minutes just waiting for your computer to warm up and boot from a floppy.

We’ve come a long way from the green glow of the ‘86 office, but the goal remains the same: making the tools work so the people can create.

For more great technology content, keep coming back to our blog.