A person on a popular social media platform revealed by their comment that they thought Microsoft invented the spreadsheet. They’d never heard of Lotus 1-2-3, or its predecessor, VisiCalc.
Kids these days.
Now, joking aside, let’s talk seriously about history and archaeology in the Digital Age.
In previous centuries – up through the mid-20th, probably – we could label historical periods by centuries, decades, or generations.
Let’s use one field, art, as an example. Renaissance Art spanned a couple of centuries, from 1400 to 1600, while the Rococo Period was only eight decades in the 1700s. Art historians also speak of overlapping periods; I don’t want to give the false impression that this stuff is well-defined and sequential. There are overlaps in the periods identified as Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Realism.
But, in the Digital Age, the rate of change is much faster. The periods are shorter.
The 16-bit Period, the 32-bit Period, the 64-bit Period.
The Monochrome Period, the Color Period.
The DOS Period, the GUI Period.
The Text-Input Period, the Voice-Input Period.
The Pre-Internet Period, the Internet Period (the Post-Internet Period?)
Cloud computing.
Hardware abstraction.
Containers.
What are we doing, in a concerted way, to identify and preserve our own history?
Let’s return now to my joke about “kids these days” and the evolution of spreadsheet applications, and see how this is illustrative of the problem.
There exists on Wikipedia individual articles on VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, and Microsoft Excel. There were other early competitors in the spreadsheet space as well, each covered with its own article.
But does there exist a comprehensive overview of the evolution of thought processes, technologies, marketing efforts, and customer demand that caused Microsoft Excel to be the only product younger people remember? How is it that the origin story has been lost so quickly?
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
(1905, The Life of Reason, Or The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana, Chapter 12: Flux and Constancy In Human Nature, Quote Page 284 and 285, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.)
The progress of technology is, to some degree, entwined with our ability to understand the historical context that brought us to our present place.
This is why I was alarmed to see that, in 2025, an intelligent adult thought that Microsoft Excel was the first spreadsheet application. There are lessons to be learned from the path we blazed to get here. There are mistakes to be understood. Successes aren’t born in a vacuum. Rather, successes are the result of decisions made and actions taken as a result of understanding where we came from, where we are now, and where we want to go.
Technology shouldn’t grow without any purpose other than preservation of its own existence, like some viral plague. We are at the point in humanity’s evolution now where technology should grow like a vector, in the direction of our choosing. In order to do this we must record, collate, preserve, and communicate our history to each person who follows in our steps, to each person who steps where we will never walk.
–Bob Young
9 May, 2025