History essay · about
Spell Check is Global: The Future of Computer Intelligence in the Hands of the Many (7B+), Not the Few
Spell check was sold for hundreds of dollars around 1981 to 1989 and is now free and built into the tools people already use. This paper documents that change from dated sources and explains it with the economics of marginal cost and bundling [62, 63].
In plain words
- People used to pay a lot for spell check. Now it is free inside phones, browsers and word processors.
- It became free because checking a word costs almost nothing to run, and it is most useful inside a tool you already have.
- The same can happen to other computer skills once they run cheaply on the devices people already own, so that billions of people can use them.