I received e-mails this week from Husain Mensch, Wenonah Liberto, Aurangzeb Swigart, Yuri Pilgrim, Merlin Frausto, Pacifica Snowden, Lysistrata Chipley, Kishore Krzeminski, Cobus Pastor, Antipater Pavia, Madhukar Whittingham, Selvaggia Hammock, and the exotic Ashtoreth Olson. They were not "real people," of course, but "sender" names attached to spam e-mails, created by the endless churning of an indiscriminately globalized name-generator. Most of them were ads for prescription drugs, which are counterfeit, or for stocks, which are almost certainly worthless. The value of these, for me, is in the philosophical entertainment of artificial reality and word salad.

The gibberish language and the surrealistic poetry generated by the spams has, alas, disappeared from the junk e-mail stream, so I am left only with the amusing names. As you know by now, I hold "virtual" or "imaginary" realities to be as real as our "real" reality, so all those generated named beings, passing through the internet in the billions per second like neutrinos, are identities of a sort. They multiply faster than any living thing, because they need nothing material to grow on, just a stream of information.

I gave a few charitable contributions last year, moved by the heartbreaking stories of oppressed people in far-off countries, dying children, and tortured animals. I wrote in an earlier entryof what happened once I was known to be a giver. At that point, in February of this year, I had received over 900 address labels with some version of my mundane name and address on them. As of today, I have well over 1000, perhaps even 1500 name-labels. I just threw out another 35, because they were poorly printed and did not include my mundane first names.

Why do I return to this theme over and over again? Because it is an illustration of something which doesn't get talked about enough in the social sphere. Many people in contemporary America are worried about the government's intrusion into the information and details of their private lives. But there is an equal, or possibly more extensive, intrusion done to us by commercial interests, companies, marketing agencies, and even charities. Every time I make a purchase with a credit card, legitimate organizations record what I buy and how much I paid for it, thus creating a record which can be sold to marketers. Every time I give money to a charity, not only do they target me for continual solicitations, but they put my name and address on dozens of other charities' lists, whether I want them to or not. In fact, the commercial websites, catalogs, and sendaway lists are more likely to include a "no-share" option for my address than the charities. The world is full of legal and commercially profitable spyware, aimed at me no matter what I do.

Identity theft happens all too often, where criminals grab the information and run with it. But what about identity "sharing," where non-criminal entities propagate your identity and information through exponentially growing chains of interlocking mailing lists and marketing data? True, there is no real harm done, unlike that of criminal identity theft, but it is a nuisance to receive piles of junk mail just because you were generous once. Looking at all those address labels, I get the feeling that I am becoming a spam-name, a virtual being multiplied by the thousands, growing smaller and lighter and more insubstantial with each pack of address labels. Ashtoreth, let's get together soon.

Posted at 3:08 am | link