They invade our existence, harass us at all times, make us waste time, disorient us, and fill our mailboxes and cell phones with garbage. Are the Spam…. Some estimates calculate that they are more than 80% of email traffic (Journal of Network and Computer Application -2014- ) are Spam, one of the ills of the 21st century that we have carried over from the previous century. It is not the worst, nor the most serious of these ills, but it is annoying like the buzzing of a mosquito. have you ever wondered where does this name come from?
The first answer that comes to mind is: must be the acronym of some expression in English (Are all cybernetic neologisms Anglicisms? Cultural penetration, the Bolsheviks said…).
Some hold that Spam are the acronyms of “single post to all mailbox” (single post to all mailboxes). Sounds good… but not everyone agrees with this version and they have searched for another plausible one: the word Spam comes from a sketch of the monty python – a very popular program in the 70s represented by a group of 6 actors (five English and one American) who synthesized the British idiosyncrasy in a humorous way. In fact, the name alludes to Marshal Montgomery, known as Monty among his soldiers (Python is a pun that is difficult to translate). In said sketch they allude to a canned pork called Spamproduced by Hormel Foods since 1937, very popular during World War II.
Two of the members of monty python –Terry Jones and Michael Palin– go to have breakfast at a diner where all the meals on the menu contained Spam. All is Spam and this is how the waiter, the cook and any character who parades through the restaurant proclaim it.
This episode was so popular that the members of monty python they recorded an album where the main song is called (guess): Spam!a word that has become synonymous with a repetitive, annoying, inappropriate and inevitable message that invades our lives.
He Spam Canned, the one that is eaten, was never marketed in Argentina, but in the 2000s it was sold in 80 countries.
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Now, if there is someone we should curse every time a Spam That gentleman distracts us, write it down carefully, his name is Gary Thuerk, “the father of Spam”, the first to carry out an email marketing campaign when he was in a company that no longer exists today, called Digital Equipment Corporation.
On May 3, 1978, he sent an advertisement through an assistant to 393 people. He didn’t do it through the internet (which didn’t exist yet) but through one of his precursors called Arpanet. The ad invited a demonstration of a new DECsystem-2020 computer.
The announcement was effective (the machines were sold for a value of 12 million dollars), but since that historic May 3 there were complaints and upset people.
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Gary Thurek He said that his boss congratulated him on the initiative, but five days later they received a call from the Air Force complaining about this advertising breakthrough. Gary’s boss made him promise never to do it again, but he lied and helped popularize this advertising method.
Some people congratulated him and others accused him of having flooded the network with spam, repetitive and misleading advertisements.
Spam, as proposed by Gary, didn’t catch on immediately until a law firm began offering to serve immigrants over the internet.
TO Laurence Canter and Martha SiegeHe did very well with this initiative and even wrote a book: How to make a fortune with information on the cyber highway. If you’re interested, it’s still sold on Amazon, but we don’t know if Martha and Siegel are millionaires…
So every time you get a Spam promoting items you don’t need or products you already bought, take a break, look out the window, gaze at the sky – if you can see it – and breathe… there’s not much else you can do. In 2010 it is estimated that 200 billion emails were spam. 46% of users have ever opened a Spam, but only 11% clicked the link to connect, interested in the product.
In 2004, Bill Gates received 4,000,000 emails and almost all of them were spam. “I receive more Spam than the rest of the people I know”said the owner of Microsoft.
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He Spam It is not free since it is estimated that almost 50 billion dollars are lost per year due to productivity. As always, wasting resources and annoying people in a confusing way, because many of those messages are booby traps, outlandish scams, and rarely good publicity.
What do we turn the wonderful instruments we have created into?
The Internet is a magnificent source of information, of exchanging ideas, of maintaining links… but in a short time, thanks to our ingenuity and greed, the Internet has become a garbage dump. With viruses, trojans, bots and spam Designed with artificial intelligence, we have turned the Internet into a dangerous place to circulate, complicated to navigate, where the search for quality material is increasingly problematic and with more advertising videos that distract our concentration… unless you pay.
In short, human ingenuity has known how to turn a marvelous invention like the Internet into an immense garbage dump with the same vehemence with which it has polluted the seas of plastic, desertified the plains, deforested the tropical forests, and melted the poles. And so it goes…
Source: Ambito
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
