Revolution is not an AOL Keyword

by

Fifth Estate # 361, Summer 2003

 

You will not be able to stay home, dear Netizen.

You will not be able to plug in, log on and opt out.

You will not be able to lose yourself in Final Fantasy,

Or hold your Kazaa download queues,

Because revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

Revolution will not be brought to you on Hi-Def TV

Encrypted with a warning from the FBI.

Revolution will not have a jpeg slideshow of Dubya

Calling the cattle and leading the incursion by

Secretary Rumsfeld, General Ashcroft and Dick Cheney

Riding nuclear warheads on their way to Iraq,

Or North Korea, or Iran.

.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

Revolution will not be powered by Microsoft on

The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base

And will not star Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee

Or Larry Lessig and Martha Stewart.

.

Revolution will not promise penile enlargement.

Revolution will not get rid of spam.

Revolution will not earn you up to $5000 a month

Working from home, because revolution is not

An AOL Keyword, Brother.

.

There will be no screen grabs of you and

Jeeves the Butler one-click shopping at My Yahoo,

Or outbidding a shady grandma on eBay for

That refurbished iPod 20-gig.

MSNBC.com will not predict election results in Florida

Or fact-check the Drudge Report.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

.

There will be no webcast of Wil Wheaton boxing

Barney the Dinosaur on the dancefloor at DNA.

There will be no mob- or wiki-blog of Richard Stallman

Strolling through Redmond in a medieval robe and halo

As St. iGNUcious of the Church of Emacs

That he has been saving

For just the proper occasion.

Survivor, The Osbournes, and Joe Millionaire

Will no longer be so damned relevant, and

People will not care if Carrie hooks up again with

Mr. Big on Sex and the City because Information

Wants To Be Free even while Knowledge Is Power.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

.

There will be no final pictures from inside the

World Trade Center in the instant replay.

There will be no final pictures from inside the

World Trade Center in the instant replay.

.

There will be no RealVideo of 2600-reading,

Linux-booting white hat hacktivists

And Mickey Mouse in the public domain.

The theme song will not be written by Jack Valenti or

Hilary Rosen, nor sung by Metallica, Dr. Dre,

Christina Aguilera, Matchbox 20, or Blink-182.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

.

Revolution will not be right back after

Pop-up ads about eCommerce, eTailers, or eContent.

You will not have to worry about a

Cookie in your browser, a bug in your email, or a

Worm in your recycling bin.

Revolution will not run faster with Intel inside.

Revolution, dude, is not getting a Dell.

Revolution will increase your Google rank.

.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword, is not an AOL Keyword,

Is not an AOL Keyword, is not an AOL Keyword.

Revolution will be no stream or download, dear Netizen;

Revolution must still be live.

*See generally Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

—posted by Eddan Katz to the Berkeley Intellectual Property Weblog, Spring 2003

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