The virus hasn't landed on my desktop yet. I'm mortified.
BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK =7C I spent yesterday afternoon running down my mental
list of friends, colleagues and professional rivals with increasing
bitterness.
I bet Josh has got it. Andrea? Probably got it three days ago. Timothy?
That little kiss-ass? Oh=21 You better believe he got it.
=22It,=22 of course, is =22Melissa,=22 the e-mail attachment virus that =
propagates
itself, essentially, by borrowing your address book. When you open an
attached Microsoft Word document borne by the e-mail, you activate a macro
that attempts to forward the message to the first 50 people in your list of
e-mail addresses, with the subject =22Important Message From =5Byour name
here=5D,=22 quickly taxing the e-mail systems of the corporations, =
institutions
and government offices it reaches. To read the rather exercised press
coverage about Melissa riding the Internet =22on a global rampage,=22 one =
would
think anybody who's anybody has received it by now.
And I haven't.
Why would I be disappointed not to receive a pernicious macro? Because, as
we once euphemistically termed the clap, Melissa is, literally, a social
disease. Having infected the computers of corporate privilege, its spread
via address list traces a trajectory of power: The more often you appear on
the better hard drives, it would follow, the more likely you are to receive
that =22Important Message.=22
And if you don't? It's time for some serious career reevaluation. Hey, I
like to think of myself as a pretty wired, late-'90s guy. I send e-mail all
day, correspond with editors -- I write for an Internet magazine, for
Chrissakes. To admit that I'm so out of the loop that I haven't gotten the
virus yet is not just embarrassing but a career liability. I mean, am I in
nobody's address book?
Consider how many generations Melissa has now been through. Not to receive
the =22Important Message=22 means that I wasn't among the top 50 addresses =
of
the first person to activate the virus, or the second round of such people,
or the third and so on ad nauseam. If you do the math -- that's 50 to some
by-now-unimaginable power of people to whom I am unknown -- my loserdom
literally increases exponentially. Soon it will require a team of Stanford
mathematicians, using a Cray supercomputer, to calculate my lack of
influence.
It might be, of course, that like high-profile viruses of the past, this
one is not quite as rampant as its press makes it out to be. Or I could
tell myself that my colleagues and contacts are simply tech- and
media-savvy enough not to open strange attachments.
But I fear that that's false consolation. It's well-known, after all, that
the more powerful the individual, the less he or she knows about his or her
own computer. (Viz. Scott Adams' dictum that the best way to measure an
individual's power is by asking him how much RAM is on his computer --
anyone who can answer that question has no power.) No, if I were on any of
the truly hot lists, the Murdoch-and-Redstone, Four Seasons level of media
influence, I should have gotten the tap Monday morning. If I got it now,
what would it matter? There are too many degrees of separation interposed
-- there must be sheepherders in Kazakhstan who've gotten it ahead of me.
In his =22Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy=22 series, Douglas Adams =
described
the most dangerous invention in history: one that shows the user precisely
how insignificant he is in the universe.
We now have that invention. Her name is Melissa. And my life will never be
the same.
SALON =7C March 31, 1999
E-mail James Poniewozik (please).
Copyright =A9 1999 Salon Internet Inc. All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip A. Todd, University of Kentucky School of Music
Eastern Kentucky University Department of Mass Communication
Text to: patodd0=40ukcc.uky.edu Files to: patodd0=40pop.uky.edu
824 Bratcher Lane, Berea KY 40403-1877=3B Voice:(606) 257-8109
=22Men profess to be lovers of music but for the most part they give no
evidence in their opinions and lives that they have ever heard it.
It would not leave them narrow-minded and bigoted.=22
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) - Journal, 5 August 1851