The Man Who Folded Himself, Again

I received this on December 6, 2001. Tonight I found a printed version in some old paperwork. Apparently I made a hard copy for prosperity because I found it such a singular spam. Intrigued I Googled the email address [email protected] and found this recent article, "Turn Back the Spam of Time" by Brian McWilliams at Wired.

Niklas Lindqvist has been keeping track of the alien time travel spam. I'll have to do some searching to see if I have any more copies. When Wired refers to the letter they reference a subject line which includes the word "Travellers" whereas mine does not. Niklas makes note of textual variances.

I have in my library Leaves of Grass : A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1892, 3 Vols. which really intrigued me when I got it at the Strand in NYC many years ago. I had never seen such a thing: a variorum.

Someday we will have variorums of publications on the web, for instance, I wonder how many versions of Kaycee are there? Why did Dave Hill create so many variants of his alien time travel spam? Is there a variorum of Dave Winer's writings? What happened to the "quick to be removed" Winer Watcher and how many copies still exist in the wild? Are there variants?

I assume we all realise that there will be academics someday studying these things. I can see it now:

"Early-Modern Blogosphere: Literative Culture & Transgressive Identity"

"September 11th Foretold: Heaven's Gate & Internet Culture at the Turn of the Century"

"A Vaviorum of Megnut: the Kinja Directive & its Role in Post Iraq America"

Posted by filchyboy at November 27, 2003 12:48 AM | TrackBack