Excel may be the most influential software ever built. It is a canonical example of Steve Job’s bicycle of the mind, endowing its users with computational superpowers normally reserved for professional software engineers. Armed with those superpowers, users can create fully functional software programs in the form of a humble spreadsheet to solve problems in a seemingly limitless number of domains.

Packy McCormick • Excel Never Dies

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Once those explanations are recorded somewhere they become Knowledge. For billions of years Knowledge Creation was limited to our biological Evolution, slow and random changes over time inscribed in our DNA. Then 7,000 years ago we invented language, 5,000 years ago writing, 582 years ago printing-presses, and very recently computers and hard-drive... See more

Alex MacCaw • The Beginning of Infinity

Going back to Excel and shifting my metaphor up a level, today ChatGPT sometimes seems more like the original PCs than like Excel (or VisiCalc). It’s a general purpose technology, there’s a command line, and some stuff that’s theoretically magic, and a few things that are extremely useful to a few people, but we don’t yet have the richness of all t... See more

Benedict Evans • Unbundling AI

A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge

Steven Levy medium.com

Excel Never Dies

Packy McCormick notboring.co

I can upload to Claude an income statement for a small business and prompt “here's an excel of my startup's finances, make it a dashboard.” A few seconds later I get this:

But, because it is fast and responsive, I can go further, applying techniques I teach in my entrepreneurship classes that help founders test their financial assumptions. “Add sens... See more

Ethan Mollick • Gradually, then Suddenly: Upon the Threshold

How Google Docs Proved the Power of Less

Sheon Han wired.com