☞ The Spreadsheet is a Simulation Machine

In praise of...Excel

From Creative Computing in 1980.

In the course of working on my book project, the following little essay found itself on the cutting-room floor, but I thought a version of it might be of interest to readers.

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In 1984, a few years into the spreadsheet revolution, the tech journalist Steven Levy, wrote a long and fascinating article about this genre of software. Not only is this article a time capsule of computing history, it also gives one a sense for how people were thinking about spreadsheets even then:

All this powerful scenario-testing machinery right there on the desktop induces some people to experiment with elaborate models. They talk of “playing” with the numbers, “massaging” the model. Computer “hackers” lose themselves in the intricacies of programming; spreadsheet hackers lose themselves in the world of what-if. Some, like Theodore Stein of Connecticut Mutual, admit that their habit goes beyond the point of diminishing returns: “I can’t begin to tell you how many hours I spend at this,” he said. “This is my pet, in a way. Scratching its ears and brushing its code…it’s almost an obsession.”

Creating and modifying a spreadsheet is an act of world-building, an attempt to reduce the messiness of our universe into an array of cells and then manipulate it (though don’t confuse spreadsheets with actual reality, which is many orders of magnitude more complex). Perhaps the biggest accounting innovation since double-entry bookkeeping (citation needed!), spreadsheets mean you don’t just have to look at a static chart or graph, you can tweak the parameters of a system and see how it responds or bites back.

Spreadsheets allow each of us to build little worlds and play with them, seeing how small changes might make a big difference, or even how big differences might make none whatsoever. And because functions can be embedded within spreadsheet cells, this large digital grid can essentially become a small, constantly updating computer, the embedded text elaborating an entire virtual cosmos, working with both the functions and the data within each cell.

During the height of the Covid pandemic, I spent an inordinate amount of time playing with a spreadsheet developed by scientists at the University of Colorado that focused on the aerosol spread of virus particles. By entering room dimensions, the number of people in the room, assumptions about behavior, mask usage, and more, I was able to better understand the shape and bounds of so many pronouncements that were swirling around during this time about what was safe behavior and how the disease might spread. I was able to anchor my intuition and even overcome some of my concerns, something that would not have been easily done without playing with this spreadsheet the way I did.

Due to their power, their transparency, and their relative ease of play, spreadsheets are found everywhere, from small businesses and hedge funds to biology laboratories. Some jobs are essentially just working with spreadsheets: you spend your entire day within Excel, manipulating data and searching for that perfect function for whatever you desire.

And one of their key powers is as a mechanism for thinking about the future. According to the computer scientist Alan Kay, the creators of VisiCalc—the first spreadsheet—were actually surprised that users were not just analyzing the past but trying to predict the future:

But perhaps we should not be surprised at all. This is a deep and profound urge within humans: imagining and simulating and worrying about what is to come. And spreadsheets gave wings to this desire.

The spreadsheet is a simulation machine. ■

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I recently finished reading How Life Works by Philip Ball and it is a gem of a book. So many insights about how we might really think about biology. Well worth a read.

I wrote a bit for the FLUX Review newsletter about the book:

Ball takes the reader across multiple levels of biology, moving from genes to cells, tissues, and even how bodies form. He explores networks upon networks, the interactions of DNA and RNA, wiggling and floppy proteins, and more, all of which affect the numerous properties of life. Intriguingly, Ball also explores how multicellular organisms operate differently from single-celled creatures. This is biology as you probably don't remember it from school.

Read the rest here.

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Ever wondered how the “bucket fill” icon worked in a painting program? Flood fill is what you want to learn about:

Flood fill, also called seed fill, is a flooding algorithm that determines and alters the area connected to a given node in a multi-dimensional array with some matching attribute. It is used in the "bucket" fill tool of paint programs to fill connected, similarly-colored areas with a different color, and in games such as Go and Minesweeper for determining which pieces are cleared. A variant called boundary fill uses the same algorithms but is defined as the area connected to a given node that does not have a particular attribute.

Go check out the Wikipedia article.

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The Enchanted Systems Roundup

Here are some links worth checking out that touch on the complex systems of our world (both built and natural):

🜸 A compass that points to the centre of the galaxy: “It’s a green floating arrow that always points to the middle of the Milky Way.”

🝳 How a ragtag band of internet friends became the best at forecasting world events: “What the Samotsvety group can teach us about predicting the future.”

🝤 “Many terms commonly used in computer programming originated with Mark I. These terms, nowadays digital, originally referred to physical features of the machine and the paper tape that encoded the programs.”

🜹 The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky: Fun with parallel evolutionary histories of Earth.

🝊 Brighter Than a Cloud: “How to describe a scintillating scotoma? It’s one of the most common symptoms of a migraine, but unless you’ve had one, it sounds unreal. A scintillating scotoma is like a barbed ripple in the pool of sight. It’s a skeletal Magic Eye raised up from the flatness of the world.”

🜸 Tech has graduated from the Star Trek era to the Douglas Adams age: “The Douglas Adams Age may well be absurd but that’s because the technology itself is absurd.”

🝖 KitchenAid Did It Right 87 Years Ago: “Modern appliances are rarely built to last. They could learn something from the KitchenAid stand mixer.”

🝊 The code worked differently when the moon was full

🝳 The 29th, and Other Calendar Quirks: “I understand the desire to rationalize systems and smooth out the imperfections. But the imperfections are fine. Useful, sometimes, even.”

🜹 Secularization Comes for the Religion of Technology: Or, how to make sense of techno-optimist manifestos, the Open Ai/Altman affair, EA/e-acc movements, and the general sense of cultural stagnation

🝊 The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs’s Greatest Rival: ‘That man was Adam Osborne, creator of the Osborne 1 that had wowed those gathered at NASA. He was Jobs’s first true rival—one who seemed destined to beat him, until his $100 million company was no more, almost overnight. Today, Adam Osborne is mostly forgotten. He only survives as a warning whispered to business students and first-time entrepreneurs: “Beware the Osborne effect!”’

Until next time.