The WWW, spam, personality - mood and idealism

According to Technology Guardian 19.11.2009 Cisco estimated late last year that there are around 200bn junk e-mails a day. The (newspaper) article Mixed Messages states that although filters intercept a vast amount of spam, it remains the route for malware and viruses now disguised as 'friend' invites. What is the impact of that ever growing volume of junk? Yesterday being World Philosophy Day reading this I was instantly reminded of:

• ideal worlds;
• the web;
• and a lady who finally ventured out to the shops.

The cogs turned as I wondered about what the web would be like without that spam. What would the internet be like if even for a day the spammers - and criminals - lay down their keyboards, phones, servers, botnets ... and we could see what the web might really be like? Or is it that spam just represents noise, the noise that is inevitably part of any system?

Then thinking about yesterday and setting intelligence aside for a moment - what would the world be like if everyone exercised true common sense? Imagine there being no totally illogical, knee-jerk, prejudiced, greed, hatred, violence, purely emotionally driven decisions and actions in our homes, communities, boardrooms, town halls and seats of governance. And then finally that lady, who having been on tranquillisers for decades finally kicked them into touch. In the same way we don't know the real internet, this lady did not know herself, neither did her rather limited social network.

It's a case of will the real internet and Mrs Goggins please stand up!

Original image source: Digital stores

Additional link:
The Honeynet Project