RE: [-empyre-] spam

[Grayson Cooke <g.cooke@cqu.edu.au>]

hi,

I've just started following this discussion, and am wondering if the few 'spam' comments that have emerged in the past few posts can be delved into a bit further, if people are interested...

> > > think of _spam_ for example as spew - ephemeral,
> > > network-dependent, a
> > > flooding or unfolding - exfoliation - then
> > > collapse/disappearance -
> > >
> spam lasts a short time until deleted - it only exists 
> momentarily within
> the network - it floods, unfolds, then disappears


individual spam mailings, yes, they may be all of those things above, and the wave metaphor is very apt. But how might we characterise the large-scale spam system as a whole, this vast, decentralized hubbub that now seems to be taking up, from all accounts, up to 20% of all email traffic (depending
on which ISP's report you read). Spam is a 'mass' phenomenon, it is a multiplicity. Here too I've been wondering if we have come across a cyborgian creature, a massively decentralized, disruptive, ironic humans-machine system of backfirings and re-injections. And although it is wavelike in its
surgings, this creature isn't so ephemeral, and I suspect it will be some time before it 'disappears', if at all, as it is constantly mutating, sprouting new offshoots and developing new systems of operating. To what degree is the spam world a multiuser 'platform' or 'environment' that enables new
hybrid forms of being to emerge?

grayson