SENTINEL WATCH December 1, 2003 Issue

What hath spam wrought?

By Warren Bolon

The short answer to my question is: Nothing but trouble.

When my wife and I returned from a recent vacation and checked our e-mail, we found 610 unsolicited offers for pornography, sexual potency drugs, moneymaking schemes, and who knows what else. Sure, there are ways to minimize the nuisance and we'll be looking into them.

The writer of the Bible's book of Ecclesiastes was something of a futurist when he or she concluded that laboring only for temporary personal gain is "vanity and vexation of spirit"—"emptiness and chasing the wind," according to a modern translation. And that phrase exposes the real pity of spam, or junk e-mail: It's an awful waste of creative energy and life-purpose for the spammer; an awesome drain on time and spirit for the spammed—the rest of us.