MIME was *easy* compared to spam (was Re: Shuffle those deck chairs!)

> The history of complex standards is that it takes time to get
> them done correctly.  Take a look at MIME, one of the
> standards that you used in the construction of your email
> message.  That effort was the outcome of a huge debate that
> started in 1990 and didn't get out the door until 1992, and
> that was an argument amongst a relatively small group of
> people.  So just because MARID didn't finish doesn't mean the
> IETF is done with spam.
Perhaps it's worth a little more analysis of MIME's success, since it 
keeps getting held up as a positive example for how we ought to be 
solving the spam problem.  For starters, I think we underestimate Dumb 
Luck -- the many ways that the stars happened to be aligned just right 
for MIME's success.  Without going into a lot of detail, there was a 
momentary convergence of needs, interests, and motivations that simply 
doesn't happen all that often.  (Yeah, MIME was like Woodstock. :-)
Still, chance favors the prepared mind, so I'm writing this in the hope 
that better understanding the MIME story might actually help us be 
ready for the next harmonic convergence.  In the case of MIME the 
prepared mind belonged to Einar Stefferud, who saw fit to introduce me 
and Ned -- semi-prepared minds? -- and suggest that we work together on 
what was then a fairly ill-defined problem.  Although Ned and I proved 
highly compatible, our experience came from vastly different ends of 
the email universe; between the two of us we were able to comprehend 
and integrate a significant fraction of the good ideas offered up by 
what seemed like a whole lot of very smart people (most of whom are 
still on this mailing list) while satisfying the many constraints 
imposed by a complex legacy system with non-binary transport.  In 
cartoon summary, Stef kick-started me and Ned, who then devoted several 
years of our lives to performing what was essentially a 
nearly-exhaustive iterative design process with the entire interested 
community, until nearly everyone was satisfied.  (And remember:  This 
was back when commerce was forbidden on an Internet we would now 
consider microscopic.  So "nearly everyone" could mean "all but one or 
two people.")
The contrast to the present situation is stark.  First, I believe the 
spam problem is orders of magnitude more complex than the problems we 
addressed with MIME.  Second, there are way too many of us.  I don't 
think we had more than 100 people active in the entire development of 
MIME.  Today, we instantly have that many people who want to be active 
on any mailing list we create on the topic of spam.  I'm very proud of 
how hard we worked on MIME, but I don't think any mortal could work 
hard enough to reproduce our approach for solving spam -- Moore's Law 
simply does not apply to the amount of communication a human can do.  
Finally, I'm not sure there's anyone who has yet accumulated enough 
wisdom about spam to provide the right spark to the process, as Stef 
did for MIME, although a lot of us are trying hard to get there.
I consider myself an optimist, because I believe that we will make 
progress against spam, and that there will come a day when you are 
getting, on average, less spam than you did the year before.  I also 
believe that some day humanity will live in peace under a democratic 
and pluralistic world government.  I'm not sure I'll live to see either 
of these goals, but that doesn't mean they're not worth working 
towards.  However, I really think a lot of us need to slow down and 
start planning for a Long Haul.  Someday, I fear, people will be 
getting doctorates in Advanced Spam Studies.  We need to be laying the 
foundations for their future research careers, not looking for a quick 
fix that simply doesn't exist.  -- Nathaniel

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