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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1998 Get off my screen OVER the past two decades I have suffered a growing stream of people coming to my door either trying to sell me something I don't want, or offering to save my soul and those of my family. This has been augmented by a growing tidal wave of junk mail, junk newspapers, and more recently the telephone sales people who always call halfway through my evening meal. But worst of all, I now see junk email and junk services purporting to be bringing useful things to my screen. All of this seems to be part of a growing battle for eyes and ears throughout the media at large. Sometimes it seems as though I am sitting under the Niagara Falls of Irrelevance, and a solution is long overdue. The door-to-door salespeople and evangelists pose little more than an irritation and minor inconvenience as they can be politely turned away. Junk mail can always be returned to the senders unopened, making sure they incur the cost of postage, which usually sees them stopping the flow. Junk newspapers are more problematic, you have to be there to intercept the delivery agent. Telephone sales organisations will generally do nothing about taking your name off their list unless you write them a letter requesting they do so. What audacity: they actually consider it their right to annoy people at home, unrequested and unwanted. I find them most effectively dealt with by asking the caller to hold while I get the man of the house. I then put the phone down and continue with my meal. As this is expensive for them they eventually get the idea and give up. Moreover, after several experiences of this kind they go away forever, or at least until someone sells them another database including my details. Of all of these problems junk email has now become the most irritating. Like some creeping disease I recently found myself the subject of more than 10 free news groups and other services. So one Sunday I set about mailing the majority to get their services turned off. The basis of my action was the fact that they were not informing me of anything I did not already know. What I did not expect was the tirade of protest from these service providers. They just could not understand my attitude. Well, after a considerable number of interchanges my screen is free of them, and so am I. For me a daily diet of 50 or 60 emails is just manageable, but beyond that I am in trouble. So this category is both annoying and problematic. They appear on my screen looking like a genuine messages, and only when opened do they turn out to be unwanted news, advertisements, pseudo requests for help, or direct sales propositions. While it is easy to develop filters to detect regular mail offenders based on the originator's name, content header and address, some of these people are sufficiently cunning to make periodic changes. Also, they often have no return address to allow some retaliatory action. So for the moment they have the upper hand, but I see a war brewing. Internet service providers may find themselves having to form a Bit Police Force. Seeking out the perpetrators and harassing them may be the only cure, and a task that needs automating to afford the greatest deterrent. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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