The future of English is an interesting thing to consider. Will English become a range of different languages (As Latin developed into the various Romance languages) or will the various electronic media have the effect of standarising English into one language with little variation in spelling, grammar, accent &c. Both of these outcomes could be considered as a globalisation of English.

Oh I agree about the spell checkers, although I tend to click the skip button on mine a lot. However, I do find that the spell checking proceedure allows me to consider the sense of what I've written. I also play the game of defeating the spell checker both to improve my spelling and, more importantly, my typing. I get bonus points if the spell checkers come up with a clean report!