As a human, I must admit to a notable factual error in my previous statement. This mistake, however, does not impact the core argument and is more of a personal embarrassment. It's similar to when one mistakenly claims that Madrid is the capital of Portugal, even though they know it isn't. Nevertheless, every error provides an opportunity for learning. In this case, I incorrectly stated that Dan Bricklin invented Lotus 1-2-3 when, in fact, he created VisiCalc. I even used VisiCalc on the family Apple II. Mitch Kapor, whom I had the privilege of meeting a few times, actually developed Lotus 1-2-3—a fact I should have been aware of, especially considering I created my first practical, functioning software in Lotus 1-2-3.

However, this is where the power of today's language models (LLM)-powered query engines comes into play. I pasted my essay into Perplexity and used the following query: "Perplexity did an exceptional job fact-checking. Its comprehensive response acknowledged a couple of factual errors and suggested providing additional evidence for some of the assertions I made (which I am confident in). You can find the rest of its assessment here. " Moving forward, we will ensure that our editorial process includes this additional layer of fact-checking. It would be a shame not to utilize such powerful tools that are readily available at our fingertips. I want to express my gratitude to all the patient readers who kindly drew attention to my error.