I loathe all technical inventions that have come to us, mainly from America, since the beginning of the last century. Well, nearly all technical inventions. The Internet is to my liking, together with its communications arm, electronic mail. I can live without the car, the radio, the telephone, the airplane, and the television set, for instance, but the computer enhanced by the World Wide Web is essential for my wellbeing. Spam has tempered my enthusiasm, though. As of late, unwanted messages are soaring across the globe, costing billions upon billions of dollars of wasted time in America alone. At the moment, spam I receive outnumbers electronic-mail messages I want to read by a factor of ten. Horrendous. Am I complaining, though? Now as ever, the trick is to turn things around. Spam has saved me from my last illusion concerning technical inventions. As I said, I loathe all technical inventions that have come to us, mainly from America, since the beginning of the last century. Spam be praised!

Addendum I (December 1, 2003)

As I was reading an article about spam a moment ago, I realized that I had not received a single piece of spam ever since I moved to Istria. Ever since I got reconnected on the Internet via the Croatian Telecom, that is. Not a single piece of spam while the world is drowning in it… Incredible. But I wonder about the reason for this bliss. I fear that it has nothing to do with my own habits on the World Wide Web; instead, it has to do with the low level of development of Istria and Croatia as a whole. If this is correct, spam will catch up with me sooner or later. In the meanwhile, economic underdevelopment be praised!

Addendum II (December 2, 2003)

“You just need to give it time,” writes Will Hughes, who knows a good deal about the Internet. According to Will, new electronic-mail addresses are spared from spam only for a short while. Spammers have no difficulty finding domain names, the bit after the “at” sign, while the part that comes in front of it is randomly generated by clever software. Millions upon millions of addresses can thus be generated and tested with each batch of advertising messages. Messages that do not bounce back have reached genuine addresses. The software keeps a record of those addresses for further use. “Therefore,” Will concludes, “it is only a matter of time rather than economic development…” Of course, I could reply that Croatian domain names would be less interesting to spammers than, say, Dutch or Danish ones, but his point is well taken still. To wit, spammers will be here before Croatia catches up with the Netherlands or Denmark. So, I am going back to my original praise.

Addendum III (February 19, 2004)

While reading another sorry article about spam, which remains a growing problem around the world, I remembered this piece about the subject and the discussion that followed in its wake. In particular, I remembered Will’s gloomy forecast. Luckily for me, it has turned out to be incorrect. In all these months since I have been reconnected to the World Wide Web, I have not received a single piece of unwanted commercial mail. Not one. As I do not use any kind of software to filter out spam, and as Croatia is not protected from it by any sort of legislation, I can only conclude that this market is of no interest to spammers. Not yet. And so, pace Will, I cannot but cautiously revert to my praise of Istria’s underdevelopment.

Addendum IV (September 30, 2017)

Well, well. My misplaced enthusiasm about Istria’s underdevelopment did not last all that long. And spam ended up being one of my least problems on the backward peninsula. At any rate, now I receive almost nothing but spam via electronic mail. Each an every genuine message is a surprise. The bulk of unwanted mail consists of inane ads, but there are quite a few pieces of dangerous mail, as well. More often than not, the messages contain nasty viruses, but some of them are after my banking accounts. Nowadays, the main reason for opening my electronic-mail inbox is to erase all the unwanted mail, which piles up at a clip. And this needs to be done rather regularly because my inbox is quite limited in size. A few high-resolution images are sufficient to make me inaccessible. Spam be praised, indeed. Now as ever, technical inventions are for the birds.