E-books and e-publishing by Samuel Vaknin (summer reading list txt) 📖

strongly urge spam victims not to respond to

spammers, lest their e-mail address is confirmed.

But spam is crossing technological boundaries. Japan has just

legislated against wireless SMS spam targeted at hapless

mobile phone users. Four states in the USA as well as the

European parliament are following suit. Expensive and slow

connections make this kind of spam particularly resented.

Still, according to Britain’s Mobile Channel, a mobile

advertising company quoted by “The Economist”, SMS advertising

- a novelty - attracts a 10-20 percent response rate -

compared to direct mail’s 1-3 percent.

Net identification systems - like Microsoft’s Passport and the

one proposed by Liberty Alliance - will make it even easier

for marketers to target prospects.

The reaction to spam can be described only as mass hysteria.

Reporting someone as a spammer - even when he is not - has

become a favorite pastime of vengeful, self-appointed,

vigilante “cyber-cops”. Perfectly legitimate, opt-in, email

marketing businesses often find themselves in one or more

black lists - their reputation and business ruined.

In January, CMGI-owned Yesmail was awarded a temporary

restraining order against MAPS - Mail Abuse Prevention System

- forbidding it to place the reputable e-mail marketer on its

Real-time Blackhole list. The case was settled out of court.

Harris Interactive, a large online opinion polling company,

sued not only MAPS, but ISP’s who blocked its email messages

when it found itself included in MAPS’ Blackhole. Their CEO

accused one of their competitors for the allegations that led

to Harris’ inclusion in the list.

Coupled with other pernicious phenomena, such as viruses, the

very foundation of the Internet as a fun, relatively safe,

mode of communication and data acquisition is at stake.

Spammers, it emerges, have their own organizations. NOIC - the

National Organization of Internet Commerce threatened to post

to its Web site the e-mail addresses of millions of AOL

members. AOL has aggressive anti-spamming policies. “AOL is

blocking bulk email because it wants the advertising revenues

for itself (by selling pop-up ads)” the president of NOIC,

Damien Melle, complained to CNET.

Spam is a classic “free rider” problem. For any given

individual, the cost of blocking a spammer far outweighs the

benefits. It is cheaper and easier to hit the “delete” key.

Individuals, therefore, prefer to let others do the job and

enjoy the outcome - the public good of a spam-free Internet.

They cannot be left out of the benefits of such an aftermath -

public goods are, by definition, “non-excludable”. Nor is a

public good diminished by a growing number of “non-rival”

users.

Such a situation resembles a market failure and requires

government intervention through legislation and enforcement.

The FTC - the US Federal Trade Commission - has taken legal

action against more than 100 spammers for promoting scams and

fraudulent goods and services.

“Project Mailbox” is an anti-spam collaboration between

American law enforcement agencies and the private sector. Non

government organizations have entered the fray, as have

lobbying groups, such as CAUCE - the Coalition Against

Unsolicited Commercial E-mail.

But Congress is curiously reluctant to enact stringent laws

against spam. Reasons cited are free speech, limits on state

powers to regulate commerce, avoiding unfair restrictions on

trade, and the interests of small business. The courts

equivocate as well. In some cases - e.g., Missouri vs.

American Blast Fax - US courts found “that the provision

prohibiting the sending of unsolicited advertisements is

unconstitutional”.

According to Spamlaws.com, the 107th Congress discussed these

laws but never enacted them:

Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2001 (H.R. 95),

Wireless Telephone Spam Protection Act (H.R. 113), Anti-Spamming Act of 2001 (H.R. 718), Anti-Spamming Act of 2001

(H.R. 1017), Who Is EMailing Our Kids Act (H.R. 1846),

Protect Children >From E-Mail Smut Act of 2001 (H.R. 2472),

Netizens Protection Act of 2001 (H.R. 3146), “CAN SPAM” Act of

2001 (S. 630).

Anti-spam laws fared no better in the 106th Congress. Some of

the states have picked up the slack. Arkansas, California,

Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa,

Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada,

North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South

Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia,

and Wisconsin.

The situation is no better across the pond. The European

parliament decided last year to allow each member country to

enact its own spam laws, thus avoiding a continent-wide

directive and directly confronting the communications

ministers of the union. Paradoxically, it also decided, three

months ago, to restrict SMS spam. Confusion clearly reigns.

 

Don’t Blink!

Interview with Jeff Harrow

By: Sam Vaknin

Also published by United Press International (UPI)

 

Jeff Harrow is the author and editor of the Web-based

multimedia “Harrow Technology Report” journal and Webcast,

available at www.TheHarrowGroup.com. He also co-authored the

book “The Disappearance of Telecommunications”. For more than

seventeen years, beginning with “The Rapidly Changing Face of

Computing,” the Web’s first and longest-running weekly

multimedia technology journal, he has shared with people

across the globe his fascination with technology and his sense

of wonder at the innovations and trends of contemporary

computing and the growing number of technologies that drive

them.

Jeff Harrow has been the senior technologist for the Corporate

Strategy Groups of both Compaq and Digital Equipment

Corporation. He invented and implemented the first iconic

network management prototype for DECnet networks.

He now works with businesses and industry groups to help them

better understand the strategic implications of our

contemporary and future computing environments.

 

Q. You introduce people to innovation and technological trends

- but do you have any hands on experience as an innovator or a

trendsetter?

 

A. I have many patents issued and on file in the areas of

network management and user interface technology, I am

commercial pilot, and technology is both my vocation and my

passion. I bring these and other technological interests

together to help people “look beyond the comfortable and

obvious,” so that they don’t become road-kill by the side of

the Information Highway.

 

Q. If you had to identify the five technologies with the

maximal economic impact in the next two decades - what would

they be?

 

A) The continuation and expansion of “Moore’s Law” as it

relates to our ability to create ever-smaller, faster, more-capable semiconductors and nano-scale “machines.” The

exponential growth of our capabilities in these areas will

drive many of the other high-impact technologies mentioned

below.

 

B) “Nanotechnology.” As we increasingly learn to “build

things ‘upwards” from individual molecules and atoms, rather

than by “etching things down” as we do today when building our

semiconductors, we’re learning how to create things on the

same scale and in the same manner as Nature has done for

billions of years. As we perfect these techniques, entire

industries, such as pharmaceuticals and even manufacturing

will be radically changed.

 

C) “Bandwidth.” For most of the hundred years of the age of

electronics, individuals and businesses were able to ‘reach

out and touch’ each other at a distance via the telephone,

which extended their voice. This dramatically changed how

business was conducted, but was limited to those areas where

voice could make a difference.

 

Similarly, now that most business operations and knowledge

work are conducted in the digital domain via computers, and

because we now have a global data communications network (the

Internet) which does not restrict the type of data shared

(voice, documents, real-time collaboration, videoconferencing,

video-on-demand, print-on-demand, and even the creation of

physical 3D prototype elements at a distance from

insubstantial CAD files), business is changing yet again.

 

Knowledge workers can now work where they wish to, rather than

be subject to the old restrictions of physical proximity,

which can change the concept of cities and suburbs. Virtual

teams can spring up and dissipate as needed without regard to

geography or time zones. Indeed, as bandwidth continues to

increase in availability and plummet in cost, entire

industries, such as the “call center,” are finding a global

marketplace that could not have existed before.

 

Example: U.S. firms whose “800 numbers” are actually answered

by American-sounding representatives who are working in India,

and U.S. firms who are outsourcing “back office” operations to

other countries with well-educated but lower-paid workforces.

 

Individuals can now afford Internet data connections that just

a few years ago were the expensive province of large

corporations (e.g., cable modem and DSL service). As these

technologies improve, and as fiber is eventually extended “to

the curb,” many industries, some not yet invented, will find

ways to profitably consume this new resource. We always find

innovative ways to consume available resources.

 

D) “Combinational Sciences.” More than any one or two

individual technologies, I believe that the combination and

resulting synergy of multiple technologies will have the most

dramatic and far-reaching effects on our societies. For

example, completing the human genome could not have taken

place at all, much less years earlier than expected, without

Moore’s Law of computing.

 

And now the second stage of what will be a biological and

medical revolution, “Proteomics”, will be further driven by

advances in computing. But in a synergistic way, computing

may actually be driven by advances in biology which are making

it possible, as scientists learn more about DNA and other

organic molecules, to use them as the basis for certain types

of computing!

 

Other examples of “combination sciences” that synergistically

build on one another include:

 

- Materials science and computing. For instance: carbon

nanotubes, in some ways the results of our abilities to work

at the molecular level due to computing research, are far

stronger than steel and may lead to new materials with

exceptional qualities.

 

- Medicine, biology, and materials science. For example, the

use of transgenic goats to produce specialized “building

materials” such as large quantities of spider silk in their

milk, as is being done by Nexia Biotechnologies.

 

- “Molecular Manufacturing.” As offshoots of much of the

above research, scientists are learning how to coerce

molecules to automatically form the structures they need,

rather than by having to painstakingly push or prod these tiny

building blocks into the correct places.

 

The bottom line is that the real power of the next decades

will be in the combination and synergy of previously separate

fields. And this will impact not only industries, but the

education process as well, as it becomes apparent that people

with broad, “cross-field” knowledge will be the ones to

recognize the new synergistic opportunities and benefit from

them.

 

2. Users and the public at large are apprehensive about the

all-pervasiveness of modern applications of science and

engineering. People cite security and privacy concerns with

regards to the Internet, for example. Do you believe a Luddite

backlash is in the cards?

 

There are some very good reasons to be concerned and cautious

about the implementation of the various technologies that are

changing our world. Just as with most technologies in the

past (arrows, gunpowder, dynamite, the telephone, and more),

they can be used for both good and ill. And with today’s

pell-mell rush to make all of our business and personal data

“digital,” it’s no wonder that issues related to privacy,

security and more weigh on peoples’ minds.

 

As in the past, some people will choose to wall themselves off

from these technological changes (invasions?). Yet, in the

context of our evolving societies, the benefits of these

technologies, as with electricity and the telephone before

them, will outweigh the dangers for many if not most people.

 

That said, however, it behooves us all to watch and

participate in how these technologies are applied, and in what

laws and safeguards are put in place, so that the end result

is, quite literally, something that we can live with.

 

3. Previous predictions of convergence have flunked. The

fabled Home Entertainment Center has yet to materialize, for

instance. What types of convergence do you deem practical and

what will be their impact - social and economic?

 

Much of the most important and far-reaching “convergences”

will