Posted by Migo on Apr 26th, 2008
New Scientist has an article about spam turning 30-years-old on May 3rd. No, not the potted almost-meat that ends up in the back of every cupboard on the planet somehow. I’m talking about spam, you know, like the stuff that ends up in your inbox telling you that your lady friend will never be satisfied with you until your junk is 16-feet long and weighs as much as the Partridge Family bus.
The first spam mail was sent on May 3rd 1978 via email to the 393 users of ARPANET, the government-run predecessor to today’s Internet. You can read the archived spam message and the reactions to it here. Today around 120 billion messages a day are spam, making up about 80-90% of all email sent. Guess Bill Gates couldn’t put his money where his mouth was when he said we’d be spam-free by 2006, eh?
Today it’s become such a part of our lives that the term has become a household word and not just for a food product anymore. There are even blogs and websites dedicated entirely to spam and nothing but spam, from talking about it to helping people block it.
Maybe we’ll get to the point one day where 100% of email sent it spam and everyone just goes back to letter-writing…or we make the jump to telekinesis. Except then you’d have to worry about people taking over your mind or sending you junk mail. Billy-boy, I don’t know how to tell you this, but it looks like spam is here to stay.
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Devin de Gruyl
April 26, 2008 at 7:08 pm
The hilarious thing about that archived reaction to the First Spam is exactly who was the lone voice that spoke out in support of the unsolicited advertising!
I’m not going to tell you who it is. Just check out this link to read the pro-spam mail, and note the name of the sender. Your jaw will drop all the way to Australia. (Do bear in mind, however, this was 30 years ago…)
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