<
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/29/gedankenexperimentwahn/#high-on-your-own-supply>
"This week, John Scalzi was kind enough to let me write a guest-editorial for
his
Whatever blog about the themes in my new crime technothriller,
Red Team
Blues; specifically, about the ways that spreadsheets embody the power and the
pitfalls of science fiction at its best
and worst:
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2023/04/26/the-big-idea-cory-doctorow-2/
Yes,
spreadsheets. Marty Hench (the protagonist of
Red Team Blues) is a
67-year-old forensic accountant who specializes in unwinding Silicon Valley
financial frauds, a field he basically invented 40 years ago, when, as a
PC-struck MIT dropout, he moved from Cambridge to San Francisco to recover the
stolen millions hidden in spreadsheets.
Working through this book – and its two sequels, which travel back in time to
the 1980s and Marty's first encounters with VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 – I was
struck by the similarities between spreadsheets and science fiction."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
