By now, millions of Americans are sick and tired of the spam
that's flooding their in-boxes with unwanted e-mail messages --
mostly offering products, services and scams that tell of big
bargains, implausible windfalls, garish porno and dumb scenarios for
bodily enhancements. In 2003, we're routinely slogging through large
amounts of junk e-mail.
These are aggressive advertisements that won't quit. They're
doing a lot to pollute the Internet environment.
Various technological and legal remedies have been developed.
Filters on e-mail programs can screen messages. Some servers try to
limit mass e-mailings. Legislators propose crackdowns on spamsters.
But many of the proposed "cures" are apt to damage cyberspace more
than improve it.
A communications system that allows only certain incoming
messages -- perhaps just those sent by people we've heard from
before or think we want to hear from again -- undermines the
Internet's vital expansive spirit. E-mails with valuable content
(and who is to judge?) can run afoul of Internet service providers
that start acting like censors. And legalistic moves against
unfettered outreach to others via the Internet could easily turn
repressive while stifling free speech.
Overall, the most likely scenario for the spam problem is that
it will keep getting worse. And we'll continue to do what we've
already started to do -- get used to it.
The spamming of America is not some strange anomaly that's
perverting a wondrous technology. It has many precedents.
Nearly a century ago, for instance, radio was a new grassroots
phenomenon that responded to community needs without huckstering the
listeners. Between the First World War and the early 1930s, however,
much of radio went from small-scale, locally-based stations to
"chain stations." As the dollar signs grew bigger in radioland,
federal authorities sided with the era's corporate broadcasters
while cutting back on the hours and watts of nonprofit stations run
by colleges, labor unions, civic organizations and religious groups.
Initially, few people assumed that the airwaves should transmit
commercials. And when the ads began to proliferate, a lot of people
didn't like what they heard. In 1928, the Federal Radio
Commission -- predecessor of today's FCC -- acknowledged that
"advertising is usually offensive to the listening public."
Many Americans were repelled by the new phenomenon of blaring
commercials. "Radio broadcasting is threatened with a revolt of
listeners," Business Week declared in 1932. The magazine added:
"Newspaper radio editors report more and more letters of protest
against irritating sales ballyhoo."
But commercials on the radio -- and then, starting at
mid-century, on television -- became facts of media life. The
airwaves had been hijacked by corporations, which used their
ill-gotten gains to turn broadcast outlets into advertising-driven
cash cows.
During the past decade, the Internet has undergone a similar
transformation. Yes, there are ways to dodge spam, navigate between
pop-up ads and surf past the more obnoxious manifestations of
cyber-shilling on the Web. But the commercialization of the Internet
seems inexorable, and every year finds cyberspace more severely
afflicted by advertising than the year before.
In the midst of the Internet's commercial descent, the anger
that some people feel about it is understandable. But here's a
reality worth pondering: While there's outrage as more and more spam
and other profit-fixated gunk keeps appearing on our computer
screens, the Internet is merely catching up with many other realms
of our daily lives.
We rarely question the ongoing presence of advertisements on
television and radio (including the "enhanced underwriter credits"
on PBS and NPR) as well as on billboards, clothes and a vast array
of other available surfaces. We expect ads to come at us every time
we pick up a newspaper or magazine. For a price, sporting events and
stadiums are named for corporations. And on and on. The branded life
seems to be spreading wherever we turn. And commercialism never
recedes -- it only expands, cheapening perceptions of life by
equating money with "worth" and possessions with happiness and
attractiveness.
The real indication of commercialism's insidious success is not
so much that it bothers people as that it doesn't. We've gotten
accustomed to the assault. And now we're getting used to the
incessant intrusions on personal computers.
What's happening to the Internet is what's been happening all
around us. But that's no cause for complacency. On the contrary.
___________________________________
Norman Solomon is co-author of "Target Iraq: What the News Media
Didn't Tell You." For an excerpt and other information, go to:
www.contextbooks.com/new.html#target
