# The Big Idea: Cory Doctorow ## Metadata - Author: [[John Scalzi]] - Full Title: The Big Idea: Cory Doctorow - Category: #articles - URL: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2023/04/26/the-big-idea-cory-doctorow-2/ See also [[RWISE - The seductive, science fictional power of spreadsheets (Cory Doctorow)]] ## Highlights - In those early years, there were three groups of people who were excited about the possibilities for spreadsheets: 1. Bookkeepers, accountants and financial officers, who saw them as a way to automate the boring part of their work; 2. Money launderers, criminals and cheats, who saw spreadsheets as a way to make money disappear; and 3. Marty: the guy who figured out that he could use spreadsheets to find the money that had been made to disappear. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gz9jmwm3zhehfverv0snazt9)) - Note: Fun view of who has use for [[Spreadsheets]] - That’s the seductive power of the spreadsheet: it’s a tool for asking *what if?* With just a little training, anyone can use a spreadsheet to build a model of some real-world phenomenon, from an ecosystem to a convenience store, from a lemonade stand to a retirement savings plan. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gz9jnhg7vttydnqq2093gg4v)) - Note: I like this: [[ZK - 2023-04-30 - Spreadsheets are a tool for asking what if]] ## New highlights added April 30, 2023 at 8:55 PM - The model can suggest, it can guide – but it cannot predict. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gz9k0rfzwqcz438vbhmrtzt6)) - Note: I wonder how much this idea about [[Modeling]] not being able to predict is true, or how interesting of an insight that is (if it is really an insight). Certainly we ascribe a lot of the guidance of models to the possibility that they will predict the future, and we try to make models better by getting them closer to taking into account all the factors that are necessary to predit the future very closely. - This is what made spreadsheets so science fictional. As we lose ourselves in a futuristic parable, it’s easy to forget the “parable” part and start to think we’re experiencing the *future.* To forget that sf writers have no more insight into what the future holds than any of us, and thank goodness, because if the future could be predicted, there’d be no reason to do anything or try anything. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gz9jyv4ah4wwbqpc7ka88m8m)) - Note: [[Spreadsheets]] being [[Science fiction]]al is an interesting idea. It probably just means that [[Modeling]] is a way to explore the future, and that [[Science fiction]] is a way of modeling the future in a more literary, qualitative way than using numerical models.