Seeing like a spreadsheet (davidoks.blog)

The article explains how the electronic spreadsheet—first VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3 and later Excel—shifted American businesses from slow, clerical reporting toward instant “optimization” of numbers. It traces the spreadsheet’s technical and commercial rise alongside earlier information-and-control systems like punch cards and filing, arguing that spreadsheets enabled financial engineering, reshaped corporations around metrics, and created conditions that will shape how AI transforms economic life.