Is there anyone out there who hasn't cursed and "suffered" at the hands of all those spams in their email in-box. It is said there are 100 billion [yes! - you read correctly] unwanted messages on computer networks daily.
The New Yorker has a piece on all that spam "Damn Spam" - which will surely resonate with everyone, as well as providing an interesting background to how it all started:
"In the spring of 1978, an energeti marketing man named Gar Thuerk wanted to let people in th technology world know that hi company, the Digital Equipmen Corporation, was about to introduc a powerful new computer system DEC operated out of an old wool mill in Maynard, Massachusetts, and was well known on the East Coast, but Thuerk hoped to reach the technological community in California as well. He decided that the best way to do it was through the network of government and university computers then known as the Arpanet. Only a few thousand people used it regularly, but their names were conveniently printed in a single directory. After selecting six hundred West Coast addresses, Thuerk realized that he would never have time to call each one of them, or even to send out hundreds of individual messages. Then another idea occurred to him: what if he simply used the network to dispatch a single e-mail to all of them? “We invite you to come see the 2020 and hear about the DECSystem-20 family,’’ the message read. As historic lines go, it didn’t have quite the ring of “One small step for a man,” yet Gary Thuerk’s impact cannot be disputed. When he pushed the send button, he became the father of spam."
The New Yorker has a piece on all that spam "Damn Spam" - which will surely resonate with everyone, as well as providing an interesting background to how it all started:
"In the spring of 1978, an energeti marketing man named Gar Thuerk wanted to let people in th technology world know that hi company, the Digital Equipmen Corporation, was about to introduc a powerful new computer system DEC operated out of an old wool mill in Maynard, Massachusetts, and was well known on the East Coast, but Thuerk hoped to reach the technological community in California as well. He decided that the best way to do it was through the network of government and university computers then known as the Arpanet. Only a few thousand people used it regularly, but their names were conveniently printed in a single directory. After selecting six hundred West Coast addresses, Thuerk realized that he would never have time to call each one of them, or even to send out hundreds of individual messages. Then another idea occurred to him: what if he simply used the network to dispatch a single e-mail to all of them? “We invite you to come see the 2020 and hear about the DECSystem-20 family,’’ the message read. As historic lines go, it didn’t have quite the ring of “One small step for a man,” yet Gary Thuerk’s impact cannot be disputed. When he pushed the send button, he became the father of spam."
Comments