James Gleick: Tangled Up in Spam
I know what your in-box looks like, and it isn’t pretty. It looks like mine: a babble of come-ons and lies from hucksters and con artists. To find your real e-mail, you must wade through the torrent of fraud and obscenity known politely as ”unsolicited bulk e-mail” and colloquially as spam. In a perverse tribute to the power of the online revolution, we are all suddenly getting the same mail.
Also, in today’s Times, In Cabs, Elmo and Friends Will Stop the Nagging
