In response to Dave Crocker's invitation to examine human communication in the
context of understanding spam, Yakov wrote
"In human communications we have a sender, a receiver, the message and a
messaging system. The sender creates the message, hands it off to the
messaging system, and the system delivers it to the receiver.If the delivery is
unsuccessful, depending on the system used, the
sender is notified of the failure. Different messaging systems can also
deliver the message to multiple receivers, and combine messages from
multiple senders into one message before being delivered to receivers.
Examples of messaging systems include: direct speech (face to face),
telephone, fax, television, radio, email, instant messaging, postal
mail, telegraph, etc. All of these have potential for abuse which varies
from system to system."
Let's add another distinction which might be useful in examining this
(traditionally the difference between broadcast or one-way media and
communicative or two-way media). This starts then to get to intention, so
following on from Yakov's comments:
Sometimes the sender intends to engage in a dialogue with the recipients, or
request information from them. In such cases the sender has an intent to
receive a reply. In other cases, the sender merely wishes to disseminate
information. In this case a reply may be totally unwanted - the intention is
for the message to initiate some action or increased knowledge on the part of
the recipient. An advertisement in print or broadcast media is a case in point
here. So is the bosses "Message to all staff". However two-way communications
media such as fax, phone and email can also be used with varying degrees of
effect to broadcast messages (junk fax, telemarketing, spam) etc.
Hope that adds to our understanding.
Ian Peter
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