The reason the book didn't mention spam all that much is that it was from 1994 and probably mostly (or entirely) written before April 12, 1994, which is when th

The reason the book didn't mention spam all that much is that it was from 1994 and probably mostly (or entirely) written before April 12, 1994, which is when the infamous "immigration lawyer spam" hit every newsgroup. It wasn't the first spam, obviously, but it did seem to mark a line where spam (USENET and email) became more and more prevalent.