We're All Spammers

Spam; the shouting out messages to all who hear. Such gross manners; inflicting your message on as many people as possible who don't want to hear it. Sounds like propaganda or religion.

In Internet Land spam started and continues with email, so much so an entire industry has grown to moderate it. Pretty useless now, an old marketeer's game. People who don't want to hear your message have ways to block; a battlefield opens up between blocker and bot.

Competing sophistication of filtering information is produced, alongside increasingly fiendish ways of the spammers to mask themselves from the firewalls.

To avoid the most malicious, we have started moving towards a White List; instead of telling the computer which programs to ignore, it has to be told which operations it can perform. Witness Vista's constant hounding of the user with "Are you sure?"

But the positive side of email evolves also, driven by mankinds impulses to communicate with one another; not just relating to those you know, but those you think you want to know. Those with common interests, hates and loves. More sophisticated ways of knowing another person come about; the rise of MySpace, FaceBook and Digg.

Improved ways of cataloging develops, one that shares it self with others, for inspection and agreement upon; del.ico.us, mr.wong and more.

Faster ways of selecting more relevant material spring up, Google, StumbleUpon and Yahoo!

Until today, selectively spamming people around us, rocking the waves whilst surfing, seeing how the ripples of influence permeate through the WWW. Only this isn't spam, this is selected spam; impotent against your Deny or Bury button. Craving for your Accept and Thumbs Up.

Are we getting less and less immune, as happens with advertising when you buy that bright red chocolate bar? If you can't beat them, join them. We're all spammers.