Friday greetings from Joe McDonnell
The first spam message was sent on the internet on this day in 1978. Besides being a canned meat product made mostly of ham, spam is also an unsolicited bulk commercial email. The perpetrator of the message was a guy in marketing at Digital Equipment Corporation, a major computer maker in its day. The email went to every ARPANET address on the West Coast.
ARPANET was an early form of the present internet, created by universities to share large research computers. The government took an interest in the system as a means of communication in case of nuclear attack. That first spam message went to about 400 professors and federal bureaucrats who took no more notice of it than anyone did of the first styrofoam cup thrown into the north Pacific gyre.
Spam didn't get going until the 1990s. Now about 165 billion spam emails go out every day and over half of them make it past filters and blockers. It's one of the side effects of the Information Revolution. Think of the Agricultural Revolution when everyone had to stay home and milk the goats and plant wheat instead of hunting all the time. Or the Industrial Revolution when you had to spend twelve hours a day in a factory instead of making grandfather clocks in your cottage.
The first legitimate message in the internet was sent in 1969. A student at UCLA was attempting to send the word login but only got as far as lo before the system crashed. So the first message on the internet simply said lo which seems appropriate considering how much the internet has changed everything.
The agricultural revolution gave us surplus food so the population could grow. The Industrial Revolution replaced muscle power with machines. Slavery went out and leisure came in. What great change will the internet bring? ARPANET was eventually swallowed up by a bigger fish, as was Digital Equipment Corp, the starter of spam. If only something would swallow up spam.
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| Which hell would be worse: nothing to eat but spam or nothing to read but spam mail? |
Here's a pretty good follow up on Internet spam for Monty Python fans:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLih-WQwBSc
I feel it is important to read every email. I support many princes and princesses who are trying to move money out of their country. It has cost me a small fortune, but it is definitely going to pay off someday.
ReplyDeleteExcellent, excellent, as always, Chairman Joe. I recall a wildly interesting road trip that you undertook with your God-nephew, Peter, wasn't it? Or Michael? During which you toured said Spam factory in Austin, Minnesota, acquiring enough tins of Spam luncheon meat to sustain the two of you, and however many unsuspecting hitchhikers you picked up, across the country to your eventual destination of immediately west of the shores of the Atlantic ocean around-about Scituate, MA.
ReplyDeleteAs I understand, your nephew has renewed his familial relationship with you, once he accepted the economics you expounded, eating through several cases of Spam variety-- not eating at fast-food restaurants or other alternate venues in the 1800 miles of your memorable journey saved a great deal of money. For that reason alone, well that and you make excellent pizza, you are their favorite uncle from Minnesota.
That being said, W.C. Joe's link to Monty Python's Spam skit, above, lead into another 'interesting' Monty Python video, we should share with our vast listening audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_G2a2hL6U
It was Michael who travelled with me. The Spam Museum was good. I heard they tore it down and built an even better one. On this epic trip Michael educated me on rap music and I taught him survival techniques: how to skin and cook a can of spam over an open flame while listening to Nipsey Hussle.
DeleteAs for that youtube link, I must remind you WannaskaWriter that this is a family blog. But should anyone chose to watch it, I caution them to have a Latin dictionary handy.
Spam, the computer kind, is more insidious than you describe. Some of my best incoming emails have landed in the spam folder wherein I must dig to find them. On the flip side, when someone says he/she didn't get your email, it's nice to have the phrase, "check your spam," and then quickly compose the subject email. Whew! Dodged that bullet.
ReplyDeleteI am curious about the length of your post. It certainly makes up in quality what it misses in quantity, i.e., your usual post. Ooops! I may have just given a back-handed compliment. Before I get myself deeper in spam, I'll simply echo what WW says: "Excellent, excellent, as always, Chairman Joe!"