No, not the faux-meat. As much as I don't like SPAM the faux-meat, I dislike e-spam even more. Hearing from the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of AU last year, 95% of the e-mail that comes through AU's servers is spam. I'd say 95% of the e-mail I receive in Gmail is spam too... thank goodness for the spam filter! I believe that spam has become a great detriment to the system of e-mail, because in some cases, it simply cannot be controlled.
Howard Rheingold, in "Smart Mobs" (See Below), talks about having signed up for a text message service in which members of specific groups could send mass text messages via cell phones to other members in their group, all at once. The groups had specific purposes, like celebrity sightings in NYC, or terrorist attacks, pop-star fans, etc. After reading about this kind of service, in my mind I immediately dismissed it as almost entirely pointless. If you ask me, someone who is a real jerk is bound to sign up for the service and spam everyone's phone with useless messages that either contain false content or don't at all relate to the group. If your cell phone plan does not afford you unlimited text messages, then your monthly bill is going to be huge, in addition to the separate monthly bill for just belonging to the groups service. Talk about a waste of money!
Rheingold mentions (on page 167) that he joined a group of a Lil' BowWow fans. He says he received a text from "a fifteen-year-old lil bowwow fan in Brooklyn [that] just got out of school." Honestly, who gives even the slightest hoot? Rheingold also mentions that he had to switch over to receiving e-mails rather than text messages, which most likely was because of the quantity or [lack of] quality of the content he was receiving. Talk about a waste of time and technology.
If, in the case of the terrorism group, you only receive one text message every three months regarding a very widespread (and not isolated) incident that may actually impact your life, then I can see this system being useful. Otherwise, I don't see the point in wasting my time and money on a service that will, in my opinion, make me dumber for using it.
"Smart Mobs" by Howard Rheingold: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780738208619&itm=1. His personal page: http://www.rheingold.com/.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
SPAM
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3 comments:
We all hate spam. Although, those e-mails from Africa about opening accounts and getting 15% of the funds blah blah blah are fun sometimes.
My grandfather recently started using e-mail and every time we talk he tells me how he gets e-mails from "some guy about penises!" That makes me laugh (and cringe) too.
But I agree with you about the mass texting.
I consider myself a very low user of text messaging and my inbox gets filled up in like a month I can't imagine getting junk text's every day. I'd end up spending more time emptying it than it would've taken to look up the news and read a full article.
I also don't feel the terrorist texting alerts are a good justification for this system. For one: I'm from NY (albeit the country not the city) but when 9-11 happened it was impossible to even get through the phone lines, would text's even go through? probably not. And also.. is that the best way to hear about bad news? In a short (probably misleading) summary?
As a side note: Do you think "lil bow wow" would be disturbed to know some old guy is signed up to get a feed about him?
Yes... I could see where that might be questionable. :S
! kn0w 1337 $p34k.... w47ch m3 pwn s0m3 n00bs.
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