Editorial

Citation

(2003), "Editorial", Microelectronics International, Vol. 20 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/mi.2003.21820caa.001

Editorial

There really does seem to be a remarkable amount of laudable activity on the IMAPS front at present. In many of the chapters, one detects an increased level of commitment to the organisation and publicity of events that will hopefully gain the recognition it deserves with high levels of attendance at quality events. Whether this is indicative of a long heralded upturn in the industry is possibly a moot point, as with this level of activity and the networking that results, there is every chance that a significant upturn will be forthcoming anyway! Much of this high level of activity probably stems from the information technology revolution that continues apace. In fact, it is not always appreciated how much time we humans need to catch up with the technology, so rapid is the pace at which it is delivered to us. Whilst we have the web and e-mail for quite some time now, it is perhaps only very recently that people have been fully able to appreciate how to make the best use of it.

Communications have improved tremendously over the last few years as more people are going on-line at home, giving them the opportunity to catch up on things in their ''free time''. One advantage is that this has enabled people to become involved in activities such as the promotion of IMAPS events, outside their offices and with an increased level of efficiency. The widespread usage of e-mail-shots to publicise events has helped significantly in this respect, as has the availability of good tools such as presentation software packages to help with the dissemination of information. This latter point may also help to explain the high standard of paper submissions that Microelectronics International has been experiencing. It is now easier than ever to produce a paper, given a good topic and some interesting research data. Since almost all submissions are by e-mail these days, the job of the production department is greatly facilitated, as papers can be relatively easily re-formatted into the house style. So much so, in fact, that prospective authors are now encouraged to e-mail their manuscripts as word processor document files with the drawings and graphs already incorporated in machine- readable form, ready for formatting as final copy directly from the submitted file.

However, the reverse side to all this improved communication and information dissemination surely has to include the issue of "spam" e-mail. It was, in fact, only recently that some kind soul explained to me where this name derives from (I refer to my earlier observation about humans requiring time to catch up!). It apparently originates with the Monty Python comedy sketch where a restaurant menu bizarrely contains recipes that are based almost exclusively around spam (a scarcely edible meat product). These include dishes such as spam, spam, spam, eggs, chips and spam to name one that contains only a modest amount of spam. Personally speaking, it must be up to about halfway, by that I mean that 50 per cent of my received e-mail falls into the category of unwanted spam, most of it from very dubious origins. I seem to get everything from offers of mail-order brides to instant millions transferred directly into my bank account (and all I have to do is send them the account details!). It may be stating the obvious, but something will have to be done about it, if we are not to be completely submerged in a sea of rubbish that ultimately negates the efficiency, and hence the whole point of the medium.

Personally, I think this has already happened with most of the media, where quality was long back sacrificed in favour of quantity. The big difference here is that, whilst I really do not need the "57-channels-and-nothing-on" television (to quote Springsteen) or indeed the newspapers, I can barely carry home, I do need the Internet and e-mail to work properly. Long back, I gave up the fax machine after we decided to switch it off at night to stop the incoming spam faxes. This did appear to work, presumably by holding up the process of sending out the faxes when a disconnected machine was encountered in the list of the sending fax machine. The downside however, was that we stopped getting faxes.

The big problem to my mind is who is going to be able to do something about the spam issue? Since it is largely an international problem and practically every attempt at international regulation appears doomed to fail, there would appear to be little hope. One thought, what if some of the computer freaks who generated all those viruses could be encouraged to declare war on the spammers? The concept of a nerdy caped crusader springs to mind here, valiantly taking on the powers of computer darkness to the good of all mankind. It would be suitably ironic if they could devise a means of out-spamming the spam producing machines and swamp them in a tide of their own returned spam, "he who lives by the spam dies by the spam"? Too much to hope? Yeah. Must dash, got to go clear out the inbox again.