Long, long ago, a brave and enterprising guy took a bold step into cyberspace and irritated a lot of people. He was a pioneer.

Thirty years ago this past Saturday, May 3 1978, the first e-mail spam message was sent. An e-mail was sent from engineer Gary Thuerk to, well, just about everyone on the old ARPANET (precursor to the Internet). The message touted a new line of computer hardware.

Folks receiving the message were unhappy. They responded loudly and negatively to the overt commercial use of what was intended to be a free forum for exchange of ideas and information. How dare he! And we’re talking someone who was pushing computer stuff, not v1@gr@ or c1@l1s.

Somewhere along the line, someone referred to the unwanted e-mail as spam. The source was a Monty Python sketch you can view here. After enjoying the sketch you can determine for yourself why something unwanted and evil can be called spam.

Today, over 95 percent of all e-mail — that billions of messages daily worldwide — is spam, junk, or unwanted. A great majority of the time spent by systems engineers is taken filtering out and eliminating that unwanted e-mail. Indeed, if you’ve noticed that the amount of spam you receive in your e-mail inbox has dropped, it’s because of a massive push by programmers to eliminate the junk. Hats off to those guys and gals.