At least twice a week I receive long emails from perfect strangers wielding arcane or illegitimate words like “append” and “optin”.   They are uninvited messages encouraging me to purchase lists of other strangers who I might want my company to assault with our own brand of uninvited email.  Some of these epistles start with cheer, as in “Hope you’re doing great.”  Some are downright ominous, as in “Do I have your attention?”  All of them are completely off-target and irrelevant, considering Jackson Spalding’s passion for in-person relationship building.

 I checked with our web gurus and they tell me that this scatter-shot sales approach violates one of the cardinal rules of electronic communications:  ask for permission before cyber-selling, lest you be sent to the sp(l)ammer.  The sad news is that a recent Microsoft security report estimates that spam represents about 97 percent of all email now sent over the internet.

This growing trend of unwanted email got me thinking about spam and what it says about contemporary global society.  So, I’m keeping an informal log on the emails that are snared in our hard-working spam filter every day.   And, another log of all the unsolicited email that creeps past our firewall.

As I sift through my research, it occurs to me that I’m on the frontier of a new dimension of cultural anthropology.  Future archeologists will examine our collective computer chips and conclude a troubling legacy for us. Based on my daily traffic, they will paint a picture of a narcissistic, materialistic, sex-obsessed culture that has trouble staying sober, slim, punctual and out of debt.

We, the people, are apparently always on the hunt for Viagra, Vicotin and vacation deals.  And watches.  I don’t know about you, but I already own three very nice watches and I don’t foresee needing another one any time soon. So why this universal craze for cheap timepieces?   Is the whole entire world now on billable time?  I hope not.

I can always count on a daily message urging me to enhance a body part that I don’t have.  Or, to connect with members of my own sex who apparently have enhanced body parts that God already supplied to me.   Sort of creepy, this spam.

And speaking of creepy, isn’t it really weird that Olympian spammers come from places like The Ukraine, Brazil , Nigeria and Poland?   Developing countries appear to have an advanced hacker workforce.  I’m told that some of these hackers have been successful in cracking into online banking accounts from the comfort of their faraway perches.  So, internet security is becoming more and more important for not only corporations, but also for individuals.

I liked the world better when Spam came in a can and you had the option to purchase or not to purchase at your local grocer.