Useless, parasitic, viral, aesthetic, luxurious spam

“Spam is ... a message that is nothing beyond its medium… Spam has no utility, and no cognitive point, for its only aim is self-proliferation…

In other words, spam is purposiveness without purpose: in Kantian terms, it is aesthetic... Computational systems don’t need any sort of aesthetic sensibility; this means that they don’t need “experience” or “consciousness.” Indeed, they function all the more efficiently without these things. Big Blue never could have defeated Kasparov if it were weighted down, like he is, with recursive self-consciousness...

… in Darwinian terms [, s]pam or aesthetics may have initially been a useful adaptation: this is the only way that it could have arisen in the first place… But spam or art quickly outgrew this purpose; it has now become parasitic, and replicates itself even at its host’s expense (cf: peacock’s tails). It serves no further purpose any more. Spam or art is a virus; and, insofar as we have aesthetic sensibilities (including self-consciousness and dwelling just in the present moment), we are that virus. Our thoughts and bodies, our lives, are “needlessly recursive” and wasteful…

The logic of spam tells us that sensibility, awareness, and aesthetic enjoyment are all costly luxuries. From a political and economic point of view, they can only be promoted — and they should be promoted — on this basis.”

-Steven Shaviro