Father of Spam Gary Thuerk Disruptive Technology

Father of Spam. My guest is Gary Thuerk who on May 3, 1978, sent out the first unsolicited mass e-mailing in history.

Gary Thuerk says he gets mixed reactions when people discover he sent out the first spam in Internet history. "People either say, 'Wow! You sent the first spam!' Or they act like I gave them cooties."

The earliest documented spam (although the term had not yet been coined) was a message advertising the availability of a new model of Digital Equipment Corporation computers sent by Gary Thuerk to 393 recipients on ARPANET on May 3, 1978, hoping to get attention, particularly from West Coast customers, for Digital's new T-series of DECsystems-20s with ARPAnet support. Instead, he ended up getting crowned, for better or worse, as the 'Father of Spam'. He says: "I think of myself as the father of e-marketing. There's a difference."

We will talk about:
When and how the ARPAnet changed the computer worldWhen and how the Internet changed the world.
Listen to my first interview with Gary here where we delve into history and how Gary failed retirement, misses working in the DoD & AeroSpace Industry, and how he got to work with the people who built the internet technology.