Microsoft Excel: Saviour of Humanity

Written by Logan Bluetooth

I was recently interviewed by respected business journal Capitalist Review Weekly for a forthcoming article on the greatest efficiency experts of the past 100 years. I shall appear alongside other doyens of productivity such as J.D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Mao Zedong. The latter seemed a peculiar inclusion, but despite his odious Marxism, you can’t deny that he got the job done.

I suspect it shall be the usual self-congratulatory erotic massage masquerading as legitimate journalism, but I have never been one to refuse praise, nor for that matter an erotic massage. The author was kind enough to provide me with a draft copy of the article before publication.

For most mere mortals, the name Bluetooth means little other than a revolutionary communications technology. Perhaps then it is a testament to a man so driven by efficiency and results that he could find time from his busy schedule of enhanced attrition implementation to invent and develop a technology that eliminated the cumbersome and unproductive act of raising a telephone to one’s ear. Bluetooth is, as always, the soul of brevity, stating simply “there are far more things a man can do with his hand than hold a telephone.”

And stroke, stroke, stroke it goes for another 2000 words or so. I found it particularly enjoyable, however a part of me wished for a feature article of my own. Not, as you cynical loppers of tall, elegant, perfumed poppies might imagine, for the benefit of my own ego. Rather, I wished to expand on one of my answers and give due respect and credit to my most faithful and trustworthy ally; an ally that has been with me through thick and thin, boom and bust, cosmopolitan and chartreuse.

Microsoft Excel: my rock, my love, my eternal soul mate.

For the perpetually suspicious web detectives amongst you, I must at this point state that I have never received any financial incentives from the Microsoft Corporation in return for favourable editorials about their software, nor will I. In fact, despite my ardent and undying love for Microsoft Excel, I am certainly not labouring under any misapprehensions about its murky roots.

Excel, or as it was known in 1979, Excommunicate, was an archaic yet undeniably ingenious and thoroughly effective manual filing and categorisation system employed by the Vatican. Pope John Paul II, widely considered to be the laziest of all the popes, thought excommunication to be a decidedly ghastly and objectionable task, and would take any opportunity to avoid it.

Rather than questioning the holy work ethic of the pope and risking getting the living hell smote out of them, the faithful Vatican mathemagicians (licensed practitioners of Mathemeligion) created Excommunicate. Simple by name and nature, yet utterly brilliant, Excommunicate used a combination of Dewey Decimal Classification, an alphabetised index of sinners, the Pythagorean theorem and a washing machine. The practical application of the components of Excommunicate is not entirely clear, but the end product was an easily decipherable list of those who were no longer in favour with the Catholic church.

By 1984, the system had come to the attention of an ambitious and bespectacled entrepreneur known as William Gates III. Fuelled by silicon chips and an insatiable appetite for the theft of intellectual property, Gates gave the order to attack the Vatican. His Microsoft storm troopers showed little mercy as they blasted the unprepared Vatican guards with their photon cannons, escaping with the blueprints for Excommunicate, various priceless artworks and a selection of ceremonial goblets.

The rest, as they say, is history. Gates and his loyal minions set about developing the system into the single most important piece of software in the history of business. Microsoft was the envy of the fledgling computer industry, for not only were they terrorising their competitors and monopolising the market, they were also able to produce colourful graphs demonstrating the exact extent of their dominance.

So what precisely does Excel offer an efficiency expert of my calibre? I consider it to be a corporate translator. English is indisputably the most beautiful language in the world, but it is lamentably as easily understood as Swahili when it comes to delivering facts and figures to ambitionless office veal, and perhaps even moreso to intellectually vacant holders of positions known only by acronyms (presumably because they are incapable of remembering or spelling the words that make up their job titles).

Excel, on the other hand, transcends language. One could waste two hours in a conference suite attempting to explain such stimulating terms as “mechanised organic attrition augmentation” and the thoroughly pleasing “instantaneous external migration of individuals previously engaged in a professional capacity”, but it is an unfortunate truth that most office workers lack the necessary education to decipher such simple terminology. Excel cuts through the confusion and delivers the message in such a manner that even the mail room boy is able to grasp the gravitas of a situation.



With each day, technological advancements cause the earth to become inextricably smaller, yet communication seems to have reached an uncomfortable plateau. More and more nationalities mix, yet assimilation becomes less and less likely, which in turn leads to turmoil and ill feeling between cultural groups that should otherwise be coexisting harmoniously. What is the answer? Microsoft Excel.

The Mediterranean proprietor of your local takeaway establishment doesn’t understand your accent – you leave hungry, he misses out on income, and nobody wins. Next time, take your laptop with you. Present him with a pie chart titled “Food I Want”. Dim sims (0%), sausage in batter with chips (100%).

This is but a solitary example of literally millions of practical, real world applications of Microsoft Excel that have yet to be taken advantage of. To think that Excel is limited to boardroom situations is unbelievably naïve and short sighted. For all you know, this program could be the key to realising the untapped potential of humanity.

Excel creates vivid colour where only the grey and drab are present; it offers clarity where previously there was nothing but mud. It presents all facets of existence in a palatable, honest fashion. If software were able to govern, I would not hesitate to cast my vote for it. It is a god amongst men and the software they create, a two amongst ones and zeroes, a saviour long ahead of its time. Viva, Microsoft Excel, my one, my only, my pure and true love.