Spam of the Jungle
There's something that, to me, is counter-intuitive about email spam: there is no way to take advantage of it or to make good from it. To explain why, first let me advance a personal theory of the Internet.
I think of the Internet as a man-made version of a natural ecosystem. Except, instead of organisms trading energy, you have web sites trading information. Just as organisms in an ecosystem survive, prosper, or die out based on their ability to consume energy, online media survive, prosper, or become defunct based on their ability to incorporate useful or novel information. Organisms that get energy can reproduce; web sites that get information can attract hits. In this theory, the ultimate biological goal of all organisms is to reproduce, while the ultimate cyberspace goal of all web sites is to attract traffic. More/better information attracts more traffic and leads to the site being kept up.
Web sites get life-sustaining information from us (external users) and from each other, just as organisms get life-sustaining energy from the sun (an external source) and from each other. That means that, for now, most of the Internet consists of the online equivalent of plants: almost all of their information comes from the external world. There's a great deal of waste out there now: sure there are some sites higher up in the online food chain, like google and other search sites, along with many blogs, but they should theoretically be able to achieve much more dynamic things than other web sites just as animals can do a lot more than plants can.
But that waste should diminish over time, because any complex system must evolve according to the principles of natural selection. So web sites that can more effectively gather and use information, or that can use information that's harder to use, will prosper. The web should evolve greater complexity, and every information source on the web will be used to "feed" some other source.
Now for spam: what the hell is it good for? I suppose you could say that spam-blocking technology feeds off of it, but there ought to be a positive way of feeding off of its information content. Maybe the answer would be a system using many email addresses specifically for collecting and aggregating spam, which would then be tested by a web-bot for accuracy and reliability, and then the "good" spam is collated into a reliable directory of useful sites and the bad spam is blocked (providing incentive to evolve into good spam). Or maybe spam is like a virus: viruses don't benefit any part of the ecosystem except themselves (if they can be considered organisms)--nothing that I know of feeds off of a virus. (Now I sound like Agent Smith in The Matrix) Or maybe spam is the flaw that disproves my theory.
I think of the Internet as a man-made version of a natural ecosystem. Except, instead of organisms trading energy, you have web sites trading information. Just as organisms in an ecosystem survive, prosper, or die out based on their ability to consume energy, online media survive, prosper, or become defunct based on their ability to incorporate useful or novel information. Organisms that get energy can reproduce; web sites that get information can attract hits. In this theory, the ultimate biological goal of all organisms is to reproduce, while the ultimate cyberspace goal of all web sites is to attract traffic. More/better information attracts more traffic and leads to the site being kept up.
Web sites get life-sustaining information from us (external users) and from each other, just as organisms get life-sustaining energy from the sun (an external source) and from each other. That means that, for now, most of the Internet consists of the online equivalent of plants: almost all of their information comes from the external world. There's a great deal of waste out there now: sure there are some sites higher up in the online food chain, like google and other search sites, along with many blogs, but they should theoretically be able to achieve much more dynamic things than other web sites just as animals can do a lot more than plants can.
But that waste should diminish over time, because any complex system must evolve according to the principles of natural selection. So web sites that can more effectively gather and use information, or that can use information that's harder to use, will prosper. The web should evolve greater complexity, and every information source on the web will be used to "feed" some other source.
Now for spam: what the hell is it good for? I suppose you could say that spam-blocking technology feeds off of it, but there ought to be a positive way of feeding off of its information content. Maybe the answer would be a system using many email addresses specifically for collecting and aggregating spam, which would then be tested by a web-bot for accuracy and reliability, and then the "good" spam is collated into a reliable directory of useful sites and the bad spam is blocked (providing incentive to evolve into good spam). Or maybe spam is like a virus: viruses don't benefit any part of the ecosystem except themselves (if they can be considered organisms)--nothing that I know of feeds off of a virus. (Now I sound like Agent Smith in The Matrix) Or maybe spam is the flaw that disproves my theory.