"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

I'm sure you've heard these words. If you have ever worked in any sort of company who employs IT staff or maybe contracts some IT support, you have definitely had this said to you. These words are essentially the "abracadabra" of the IT arsenal, and I’m aware that sometimes resolving technical dilemmas can seem like magic to some. I know I've been hit with the phrase "Are you a wizard?" more times than I can count. Despite what I would like to claim for myself, I'm not a spell flinging old man with an epic beard but I digress. So where does this phrase come from and why is it so popular? Why has it become the catchphrase of anyone quoting the hit TV show "The IT Crowd?" Why does it seem to solve so many issues? Well my friend, I have these answers.

In order to understand why it's the bee's knees of IT tools, you need to understand a bit about computers and a bit about your IT department. We'll start with the latter since it's a bit more fluid.

Your IT person, if they are in-house, are probably drowning in the sea of an ever growing pile of tickets. No no, we aren't talking about Jimmy Buffet or Daft Punk, we are talking about service request tickets. These handy digital requests tell them what needs fixing. Some can be as benign as "The printer is out of ink!" to something more disastrous such as "I've deleted the company financial data!!!” In either case, your IT person is getting lots of them daily. It's just how it is! In fact on days where tickets aren't flowing, they start to worry something is wrong with the ticketing system. I'm not saying you should necessarily feel bad for them, this is their job after all. Maybe make sure you say thank you when they resolve your ticket, but this is the bread and butter of their job. The point I wanted to make with this is that IT staff get a lot of them, and each one really says the same thing: "I can't work, so the company can't make money, so get me back to work asap!!!"

Your IT staff could spend all day looking through event logs, chatting up the Google gods, pouring over tech forums, testing, manipulating, upgrading, and updating your system till they find the root cause of the issue but at the end of the day they just need to get you back up and running. I know I know, this sounds like fast food IT and in a lot of ways it is!! But unless your company has employed in house developers, has a massive budget, and is perfectly fine closing one service ticket a day (if that) then this is what we are stuck with. In the end restarting your computer really does fix most little problems and it keeps you working, keeps them working, keeps the bosses happy, keeps the customer happy, and keeps the world spinning. But why does it work?

Have you ever wanted to create something? Like a piece of art? Let's say you get a cool idea and want to draw it out on a piece of paper. You get out the paper and pencil and start drawing. You have the idea in your head and you go to town trying to create this work of art, but in the process you make some mistakes. Maybe you overdraw a line so you erase it. Then you didn't like the way you drew one part so you erase it and change it. One or two little mishaps are one thing but over time you make more mistakes and your masterpiece really isn't turning out like you wanted it. The paper starts to rip and you get more frustrated that it's just not working as it should. Sound familiar? Finally, you just say heck with this, I'm going to start over from scratch with the same idea and tools. Congratulations, you just restarted your computer!!

Wait what?

OK bare with me, cause I'm going to diverge from insulting your (I'm sure) wonderful art skills and explain what just happened in computer speak. Take a deep breath, I promise it won't be so bad. Let's break that down just a bit. First off, your computer is just a tool. No it can't think for itself...yet... it's not out to get you. All your computer really is, is a series of really complex on/off switches. These on/off switches make up all the instructions on your computer. These on/off switches are called binary and to a computer they are represented as either a "1" or a "0." These 1s and 0s are strung together in long, super specific patterns to make your computer do exactly what you need it to do. Most of these instructions are done without you ever even knowing! These complex patterns have lots of different names and uses but the ones you are probably most familiar with are called "Programs" or "Software." These handy pieces of code are written by super smart people called programmers who spend all day looking at what seems like gibberish to make the computer do something specific. Unfortunately that means these programs are written by people, and despite our best intentions, humans do make mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes aren't known until years after the software was written, and with the complexity of these instructions, they can stack up as they are being followed.

Are you still with me? Good.

So what happens when too many of these errors pile up? The computer breaks. It dies. It starts "acting weird" as some people like to state in their tickets. The instructions had the best intentions when it began its work, but like with all things, a computer sometimes just needs to start over at square one and begin drawing on a fresh sheet of paper.

The reason the phrase is so popular is because it works! Restarting your computer is the simplest form of getting back to square one. You would never ask an artist why they didn't keep drawing over the same mistake riddled paper, so why ask your computer to keep running on the same error riddled code?

Turning your computer off is throwing away the ripped up, marked up, glob of "art." Turning it back on is grabbing a new sheet of paper, sharpening your pencil, and trying again with the same idea, same instructions, same tools, different attempt.