Beautiful Russian Women Are Waiting to Meet You
March 2010
Ah, those beautiful Russian women. If my e-mail inbox is any indication, there must be thousands of them out there, all waiting to meet me. And to be honest, if I weren’t so busy, not to mention happily married, I’d love to meet them too. But there are some things I don’t understand. What is it about me that they find so appealing? And how on earth did they get my e-mail address? Surely, ‘tis a mystery? Not.
Ah, spam, it bedevils us all. How could it not in an era when 90 percent or more of all e-mail is allegedly spam? Isn’t it amazing how clever and creative spam purveyors have become? Not terribly long ago, for example, one enterprising spammer successfully hacked one of ACRL’s lists. Although this happens from time to time, it’s always a bit of a surprise. In this case, the fact that the perpetrators had obtained access to the ALA list server was annoying enough. But there was more. For this incident in turn initiated an e-mail conversation that began with the forwarding of the spammer’s message and its subject line about “beautiful Russian women.” As a participant in that conversation, it eventually dawned on me that we had unwittingly converted an obvious piece of spam into a bona fide thread on the list. As one of my colleagues observed, clearly the spammers have won.
Or perhaps not. That’s the thing about spam. It’s so common, so pervasive, that we’ve basically learned to live with it. Consider, for example, the title of this editorial. What did you think when you read it, and how long did it take you to recognize the reference? More than a few seconds? Probably not. Now consider how you would have reacted to these very same words a few years ago? Would you have been puzzled? Confused? Angry? All of the above?
Change happens, but so does familiarity. New stuff shows up almost every day. Some of it is exciting. Some of it isn’t. But whatever our response, within a fairly short time today’s exciting new development doesn’t seem all that new or exciting any more. The novelty wears off, and before long, we’re taking it for granted. That’s the thing about most changes. They look a lot more exciting at the introduction stage than they do at implementation.
And here’s one more thing about change. Most changes are a mixed bag. The invention of e-mail was undeniably a major milestone in communication technology. E-mail has changed the way we do business, the way we communicate, whom we communicate with, and how we communicate with them. It has changed our world and our lives. And it has given us spam.
Progress, it seems, is an uneven thing. Even the most beneficial changes come with side effects. Somehow that seems a comforting thought. Maybe it’s because it helps me to realize that, no matter how nasty the side effects, in the end most change also results in progress while the side effects prove survivable. In the end, maybe that’s just life. No pain, no gain. --IER
|
