Seeing Like a Spreadsheet

by paulpauper on 3/28/2026, 4:28:32 PM

https://davidoks.blog/p/how-the-spreadsheet-reshaped-america

Comments

by: dcre

This looks really good. Haven't read in full yet, but I was hoping to see him credit Ben Evans's "Office, messaging and verbs" (2015): "In effect, every person on that floor is a cell in a spreadsheet. The floor is a worksheet and the building is an Excel file, with thousands of cells each containing a single person."<p><a href="https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/5/21/office-messaging-and-verbs" rel="nofollow">https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/5/21/office-mes...</a>

3/30/2026, 8:26:09 PM

by: aworks

This has interesting speculation on the future business impact of AI, extrapolated from Excel:<p>"This will be genuinely extraordinary for what organizations, particularly the best organizations, can achieve. But if each previous ideology of the corporation illuminated something real about its character and potential, each also, in the fullness of time, deformed it. The financial ideology was blind to what could not be quantified; and the AI ideology, I suspect, will be blind to what cannot be made legible as a workflow."

3/30/2026, 8:40:44 PM

by: designerarvid

Maybe you’re talking to the wrong people? Management consultants spontaneously express their love for excel without being prompted. I’ve even seen it at parties.

3/30/2026, 8:30:44 PM

by: andrewstuart

I really feel for Dan Bricklin. He should have been richly rewarded for his innovation.

3/30/2026, 7:14:33 PM