This morning I received 4 unsolicited E-mails. This is a reasonably small amount of junk compared to most days. These E-mails made it past my ISP’s spam filtering program and my personal block list.
Most approaches to fighting spam involve detection and deletion. Auto detection of spam E-mails is not always perfect, running the risk of deleting good E-mails. I know this since I’ve had to rescue the occasional E-mail from the trash.
Are there any alternatives?
Earthweb title page
Science fiction to the rescue! Marc Stiegler wrote “Earthweb” and solved the spam problem in a very satisfying way: he charged people to send unsolicited E-mail. For example, I could set my price for receiving unsolicited E-mail at $10. The 4 E-mails I received today would give me an extra $40. YES! We’ll be RICH! Or spammers will be more selective and send E-mails only to people they strongly believe will purchase their products.
Earthweb is an entertaining book and goes on to vision how the web could be used in a positive way. It covers topics like building trust, facilitating collaboration, and statistics.
All this is presented in a science fiction story line: unknown aliens are trying to destroy humanity and the only solution is to send a suicide team into the alien ship to blow it up. How does the suicide team come up with ideas to defeat the monstrous ship? They use the web which lets the author reveal ideas on what the web could be.
Note: Earthweb was published by Baen in 1999.
Which ideas in Earthweb do you see implemented today?
What price would you put on receiving unsolicited email?
