Email filters and suppression of communication of ideas

Discovering that my main local email server provider has been blocking addresses whenever getting nuisance email from that address, often blocking out whole countries in the process, I had wondered what the purpose of the nuisance email is. Sometimes there is a bunch of them supposedly advertising viagra or wristwatches; there has been a lot of them supposedly saying one needs to buy trucks. A half dozen a day recently declare that my "federal tax payment has been rejected." Financial sales motives of such email are questionable; they just seem to only have the purpose of being obnoxious; people are likely to block them with filters.

That may be the purpose of that nuisance email, to get people to put filters in their communications. Why would that be a purpose? I remember my years as an electronics technician; jobs typically lasted about two years apiece in that profession back then. (BTW Thank goodness for the federal social security retirement system, there would be no way to get a pension from employers under the short term employment characteristic of technicians back then.)

I considered myself an idea person, and it took me decades to fully realize that even private corporations are not interested in employees ideas - except to control them, of course, lest they provide competition somehow. But back then I did not realize that. I looked into how one would submit a good idea to the company, an idea that was not related to my job assignment ongoing, but one that might be of value more widely in the company, as a new possible product, for example.

What I learned was that there was only one way to submit an idea: tell it or write it up and give it to one's immediate superior. Even if one's immediate superior was not capable of understanding the new idea, the subordinate's idea had to go through him, and any attempt to go around him was considered an extreme misconduct. It was further told to me that all one's superior could do with it was either trash it or pass it up to his immediate superior. And so on. And if it was being considered a viable idea the company might be interested in, it was widely known that the name of the originator of the idea would have been changed to that of the superior. Among the technicians it was wryly said that the only way to get one's good idea adopted, was to make one's boss think it was his idea.

This was typical corporate function back in the 1950-1960-1970-1980-1990-early 2000's, at least, and doubtless still rampant. It really discouraged creative ideas from getting produced by the technicians who were the ones most knowledgeable of the characteristics of real things in operation.

Although these were general characteristics of the situation, there were exceptions; I sometimes had several supervisors per company worked for. Most had the above-mentioned characteristics, but I had some immediate supervisors who were accepting of my ideas - some very supportively; others grudgingly. Supportive ones were found at Pertec Computer Corporation in Chatsworth, and some at Shugart Corporation in Sunnyvale, California. Some who were grudgingly supportive were experienced at Vehicle Security Electronics in Chatsworth. These were perhaps 10 percent of my supervisors; the others fit the suppressive pattern.

The internet has opened up the potential for ideas to flow much more freely from those who can produce them. Yet there still has been much suppression of technological idea flow and potential to accept and make them physical. The setting of filters in email is only one of them of course; there are lots of others in employees' life, such as technicians having to cope with the college degreed folks who consider themselves far more intelligent than technicians could ever be and therefore consider any mere technician's ideas as a challenge to their superiority, thus to get quickly squashed by any means. And the so-called employment-agreement, often required just to get a job in a technical field, demanding that all ideas the technician ever thinks of, on any subject matter, be given over to the company, and the company had no responsibility to consider utilizing the idea nor even keep from spreading the idea outside to those who steal ideas to start businesses with them, without compensation to the one who had created the idea.

I consider all this suppression of ideas as a rot in the system, dragging it down in the long run. Management apparently generally considers that ideas tend to disrupt the status quo, even could interfere with business-as-usual. Unless grabbed and controlled by those who play business games, to be used as another means of gaining wealth - and not having the prime purpose of providing the customer with new potentials for doing their lives nicely - which the originator of technological idea has in mind as the purpose of the idea.

So the obnoxious email might have a purpose after all - to get filters put in the system to block communications from "unauthorized" sources - gradually cutting down the ability of the internet to be a means of bypassing the control of the flow if ideas in the world. Fits the pattern.