Last Friday I heard How the Electronic Spreadsheet Revolutionized Business by Jacob Goldstein for Planet Money on NPR. It’s four+ minutes long, it’s about change, and it’s worth your time. The big moment for me in the story comes through in this short paragraph from Jacob Goldstein:
GOLDSTEIN: When the software hit the market under the name VisiCalc, [Alan] Sneider became the first registered owner, spreadsheet user number one. The program could do in seconds what it used to take a person an entire day to do. This of course, poses a certain risk if your job is doing those calculations. And in fact, lots of bookkeepers and accounting clerks were replaced by spreadsheet software. But the number of