Seeing Like a Spreadsheet
2 days ago
- #AI-future
- #spreadsheet-history
- #business-transformation
- The electronic spreadsheet, particularly Microsoft Excel, is a ubiquitous tool that reshaped the American economy, yet it is often unloved despite its success and widespread use.
- Before spreadsheets, firms were limited by management's ability to process information, leading to small, local businesses until the 'control revolution' introduced technologies like the telegraph and typewriter, enabling larger corporations.
- Dan Bricklin invented the electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc, in 1979, which transformed business calculations and made the Apple II a business machine, marking the first 'killer app' in software.
- The spreadsheet evolved through competitors like Lotus 1-2-3 and eventually Microsoft Excel, which dominated with its graphical user interface (GUI), becoming the standard in spreadsheet software.
- Spreadsheets enabled financial engineering and the rise of private equity, such as leveraged buyouts (LBOs), by making complex calculations fast and iterative, as seen with firms like KKR and Michael Milken.
- Beyond finance, spreadsheets promoted a view of corporations as entities to be optimized financially, leading to trends like outsourcing, share buybacks, and hollowing out of manufacturing, as exemplified by Boeing's decline.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) is predicted to transform organizations similarly to spreadsheets, by processing information and coordinating action at scale, but may impose an ideology that values legible workflows over human, ineffable elements.
- The article warns that while AI will enable greater achievements, it risks devaluing the human aspects of corporations, just as spreadsheets overlooked unquantifiable factors in business success.