---
title: How the commercial spreadsheet reshaped America
url: https://davidoks.blog/p/how-the-spreadsheet-reshaped-america
edition: /collider/2026-05-19/index.edition.md
position: 3
date: 2026-05-19
source: mailchimp
original: https://mailchi.mp/pathwright/collider-may-19-26
retrieved: 2026-11-09
visibility: public
author: /people/justin-hall.person.md
emoji: 🤑
---

🤑 **[How the commercial spreadsheet reshaped America.](https://davidoks.blog/p/how-the-spreadsheet-reshaped-america)** “The spreadsheet promoted a view of the corporation as something to be optimized: a bundle of assets, liabilities, and agreements that could be understood completely with, well, a spreadsheet. There are certain things in the making of a great company that are illegible and unquantifiable, and which even go against a purely financial logic. The very best companies behave more like cults or armies than like bundles of assets.”

[David Oks](https://davidoks.com/) ∙ Article