Science & Tech Quote by Eric Allman

Allman’s line lands because it treats technological adoption less like a heroic breakthrough and more like a social coordination mess. The “telephone problem” is a neat shorthand for network effects: the first telephone is useless, not because the device fails, but because the world around it hasn’t agreed to participate. By invoking that history, he’s quietly arguing that spam isn’t just a technical nuisance; it’s a collective-action failure where incentives don’t line up.

The subtext is impatience with silver-bullet fantasies. People “want some sort of technology” to fix spam the way they want a new lock to fix a neighborhood crime wave: something you can install without changing your habits or confronting who benefits from the status quo. Allman, as a scientist steeped in email’s plumbing (and in the uncomfortable politics of open systems), is pointing at the gap between desire and deployment. Everyone wants the cure, few want to be the early adopter who takes compatibility hits, costs, or blame when it breaks something.

Contextually, this reflects the long era when email’s openness - its near-frictionless ability to connect anyone to anyone - became its greatest liability. Anti-spam tools often require shared standards, authentication, or stricter identity, which immediately raises fears about centralization and gatekeeping. Allman’s analogy works because it reframes “spam tech” as infrastructure: progress depends less on inventing the next clever filter than on getting enough people to commit, together, to a slightly less convenient future.