Death by a thousand cuts, how does the spreadsheet resist

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:04:00 GMT

Yesterday I talked about the ‘death of the document’ my primary analysis was around word processing. Although this is probably the most common use of office products it is certainly not the only one. Another common office driver is the spreadsheet, particularly in financial parts of organisations, but also in sales departments along with budgeting across departments. Even though spreadsheets are documents, their manifestations are not always document centered like word processing documents (think of linked worksheets etc..). There are online spreadsheet applications (EditGrid as well as Zoho and Google apps), most online versions are functional replicas of their offline versions + sharing. They don’t appear to be real innovations, rather spreadsheet with collaboration grafted on. Just to jog your memory I am suggesting that word processing documents are experiencing death by a thousand cuts. The cuts are being administered by a plethora of paragraphs from blogs, wikis, email, and numerous other online services. The same cannot be said for humble spreadsheets, to date I haven’t yet seen the emergence of numerical online tools that kill off spreadsheet usage within organisations. Maybe I’m missing something here, help me out. Is it already happening or do you have idea that it will, if so what does it look like ? is it also death by a thousand cuts?

Folknologist - documents tag

Death by a thousand cuts, how does the spreadsheet resist