Spam, Pornography, and Cancer as Anomalies
FINAL PAPER FOR PORTFOLIO
EMAC 6374 Digital Textualities
By John Kay
December 13, 2011
I went to my family physician in September, 2007, for my annual physical. I looked forward to the examination because I had lengthened my aerobic exercise to sixty minutes per day as she had recommended at the previous physical. Unfortunately, the results of the blood-work showed something “abnormal.” Follow-up testing revealed that I had multiple myeloma, which is cancer of the plasma cells. Normal cells contain 46 chromosomes, but the cells of multiple myeloma patients have 53 or more. The Mayo Clinic classifies cells that do not contain 46 chromosomes as chromosomal anomalies (Mayo). Here and in many other topics, anomaly connotes problem because such outliers sit in a danger zone; however, a dictionary defines anomaly as an “irregularity” or “deviation from the common rule” (Merriam-Webster). In The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture, editors Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson use the anomaly. Anomaly serves as an appropriate descriptor for spam, pornography, and computer viruses.
Academic study of a subject requires the suspension of value judgment. Emotions swirling around hot-button issues can distort or color the analysis. The words spam, virus, and pornography illicit strong opinions, which can prevent an objective analysis. As I wrote in the Text Object (“Terrorism and Spam”), when analyzing “things,” the seventeenth-century philosopher Benedictus Spinoza would caution me that “things” are not “more or less perfect because they delight or offend the human senses, or because they are beneficial or prejudicial to human nature” (Parrika and Sampson, 11). As with Spinoza, Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson want to move “‘beyond good and evil’ and instead focus on the forces constituent to such moral subjects” (11).
In some ways the book’s subtitle almost contradicts itself and their premise. They refer to anomalies as irregularities but then add the value-laden nomenclature “the dark side.” Spam, computer viruses, and pornography are anomalies in digital culture but not anomalies in the “dark side of digital culture.” They belong, rather, to the dark side of digital culture, where they are regularities. The authors solve this rhetorical confusion with the word from. Scamming spam, computer viruses, and pornography are anomalies from “the dark side of digital culture.” Such clarification might sound like an unimportant exercise in semantics but lies central to the argument that spam, computer viruses, and pornography are anomalies in digital culture, in whose dark side they reside.
Topological analysis shows that spam, computer viruses, and pornography are anomalies. The editors write, “we use the term topology to address the complex assemblages of network society, which … encompasses the complex foldings of technological components with other aspects of social and cultural reality” (5). The Internet allows international communication for profitable and non-profitable uses. People of varying societies, subcultures and cultures (including languages) around the globe may and do utilize this technology. To put it another way, topological analysis shows that the Internet is a system, not just of networked computers, but also, of international users. This complex system, which affords usage by many different types of people of different ideologies and pathologies, includes spammers, scammers, hackers, and pornographers: it makes possible their operation on the Internet. Spam, viruses, and pornography thus come with the system. By volume they certainly are not irregular or abnormal. Topological analysis reguirs the consideration of cultural and societal forces as well as of technologies. This perspective shows that spam, viruses, and pornography are anomalies, which “are understood as expressing another kind of topological structuring that is not necessarily derived from the success of friction-free ideals as a horizon of expectancy” (7). Therefore, glitched media objects also are anomalies. My Still Images Object (“Descent into Glitch”), for example, shows a progression from controlled, manipulated photographs in which the focus is on the finished picture to glitched photographs in which the focus is on the creative process. Instead of being considered as irregular or abnormal, the resulting anomalous glitches produce works of art.
After conducting a topological analysis, analysts may consider the ethics involved. Pornography can help adult viewers in practicing some sex therapies and in achieving semen samples for medical purposes, but such examples comprise only a minute fraction of porn’s uses. Watching pornography can give people, especially children and teenagers, an inaccurate understanding of body image, sexual relations, and interpersonal relationships. Porn can lead people to think of others as only sources of sexual gratification. Porn can hurt marriages by encouraging spouses to view it, rather than interact with each other, for sexual satisfaction. Porn consumption can harm one’s spiritual and emotional maturities. An analysis of the ethics of pornography needs to include its effects on those involved with its production and distribution. Young adults, especially women, wanting to land acting jobs resort to starring in pornographic productions. By actually doing what they are portraying, the “actors” subject themselves to sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies and feel/are sexually, physically, socially, and spiritually degraded. They involve themselves in an industry replete with illegal drugs and criminal activity.
Spam and viruses can harm more than harddrives of personal-computer users. Malicious code can damage hard-drives of businesses and organizations. The damage can financially cost them for equipment repairs and personnel power of, not just repair technicians, but also, the users who lose productivity. Users of networks might include physician offices or law enforcement agencies or the military, for whom damaged networks could result in the communication of wrong information or no information in times of emergencies. Potential customers might switch to competitors if they have problems ordering from damaged websites. Employees lose productivity by sorting through inboxes clogged with spam. As some of the hyperlinks on the Text Object show, individuals have lost billions of dollars from scammers, such as from Nigeria. On the other side, scammers, hackers, virus distributors, and some spam makers are harming themselves and their families by participating. Thus, pornography, some spam, scamming spam, and computer viruses truly do belong to the dark side.
Combining the topological approach with an ethical analysis yields a more-complete understanding of spam, viruses, and pornography. They are anomalies from the digital network culture but not benign ones. After learning that I had multiple myeloma, I traveled in 2007 to M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital in Houston. They confirmed my diagnosis but would not do anything about it. I switched to the Myeloma Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. My oncologist could have said, “Yes, you have a malignant chromosomal anomaly. It eventually will kill you, but we are not going to treat you.” Fortunately, he not only recognized the anomaly, but also, successfully treated it with tandem autologous stem cell transplants. The description of proposed treatment for scamming spam, viruses, and pornography extends beyond the scope of this paper and involves a thorough analysis of the structures that make possible their existence. I appreciate this book’s insistence on analysis.
