On a normal day, I delete 70 to 80 percent of my email unopened. Foolishly, I think I am being productive instead of wondering why I receive so much unwanted email or charting how much time I waste vanquishing it. I viewed spam narrowly as unwanted advertisements. To Finn Brunton, however, spam is much, much more-"the use of information technology infrastructure to exploit existing aggregations of human attention" (p. 199, italics in original), or that which wastes our time and resources. He argues convincingly for very broad definitions of spam, based on the violation of community norms which hurt people's web experience. As well as the familiar email spam, Brunton explores personality spamming, social network spam, litspam, Craigslist spam, and, most fascinating, robot-readable spam such as splogs (spam blogs) and spings (spam pings), which reflect the rapid morphing of opportunities and spammers.
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