Ode to the Spreadsheet

Tim Harford has a second round of his podcast series on the BBC, 50 Things That Made The Modern Economy, which rolling out new episodes weekly. The first season’s episodes were collected into book form, where the new second season is extending the list of short stories about technologies that have changed how people live and what they do.

We highly recommended the series, where last week’s episode on the humble electronic spreadsheet is a standout among all the episodes of the entire series, which has included tales of items such as the Billy Bookcase and the Index Fund.

What makes the 11-minute episode stand out how it ties into modern concerns of how jobs change when new technologies make old ways of doing things obsolete. What can happen to people when robots can take over their jobs?

It’s not necessarily what you might think, if 40 years of computerized spreadsheets are the example to go by for answering the question. Do check it out!

Meanwhile, if you’d like to find out a little bit more about the early history of the electronic spreadsheet, Business Insider met up with the two guys who invented it!

Previously on Political Calculations

• Elevators that Go Up, Down, Left and Right….
• Jack Bogle on Investing