Heard the band The Muse interviewed about their new single played on JJJ breakfast/drive this week, it's called Uprising.
Like it a lot.
This is a glam rock anthem for new media.
Listen:
"Green belts wrapped around our minds and endless red tape to keep the truth confined...
They will not force us, They will not stop degrading us, They will not control us, We will be victorious."
........ ........ ....... Rise up and take the power back, it's time the fat cats have a heart attack..."
Don't worry. They are.
Has anyone yet coined the term: the fifth estate?
Because if the traditional media is the fourth estate, then social media is the fifth.
Once upon a time ... ever since Gutenberg,
well probably ever since the Chinese invented...
well ... ever since people started scrawling... on ...
paper... tablets... rock walls...
It's always about "hearts and minds" - ALWAYS!
In media, in sales, in marketing, in politics, in love ... and in war.
A beating heart plays a song long before it's written. Not just one song of course, that would be an elevator, not a human.
Though I'm sure I've met a few elevators. A lucky few are able to parse the song of their heart into a song.
My ears heard The Muse's Uprising on the radio for the first time but my heart knew it.
The ears are just the technology, the heart is the program.
And if you have the power to hack into the program - that's influence.
That's power. And as one Twitterer I know would put it.... "MU-HA-HA_Ha-ha!"
(Translation: evil laugh.)
Social media and new media ... however you define it .... is a democratic movement - it's an "enabler".
It is an agent of social change.
Just wait until Africa gets broadband writes UK new media pioneer Bill Thompson, who's a journalist, commentator and technology critic based in Cambridge, England.
He has been working in, on and around the Internet since 1984.
@billt, his Twitter name, wrote in the billblog post called "Oiling the Digital Society" that Africa will be a new voice to be reckoned with.
It seems like the media is shifting gears from fourth to fifth.
The Fourth Estate considered itself the People's watchdog.
But the People want to speak for themselves.
When only DM will do.
President Barack Obama twitters about health reform every week.
What ever programs the heart is power.
Recording artists publish their own music online.
Authors offer their fans poetry and literature online forums.
This best-selling author supports the internet and makes his work available free online:
Make your mark - if you dare!
But know one thing.
Send is not send.
Send is publish.
Technically, I know that publish means "anything communicated to even just one person". I just think plain English should be used. Send is publish when you're in 5th gear.
Every time I put my cursor in that tweet box, I write, I'm thinking and editing, and I'm kind of edgy, and sometimes I hit return and you know what that means... tweet :o
It's published. There's no bringing it back. There's no safeguard. There's no "are you sure you want to PUBLISH this tweet!
Bloggers blog to be published.
But the people who use and love social media - the great majority - aren't interested in "being published" they're more interested in connecting with their friends.
There's this gap between "publish" and "send" - two different songs.
"Sendlish" .... perhaps someone needs to invent a word that's not as flippant as "bing" or "tweet" or "blip" because it's "PUBLISH".
This "send-publish" rush sprang forth today when I again heard Uprising while shopping.
As an online journalist I have spent hours, nights, weeks hitting the "publish" button. (Not the "send" button)
As a professional journalist, I've considered issues such as privacy, cyberbullying, regretful posts which may be damaging.
I kind of take the published word for granted in many ways because I've spend my entire life being published.
But until now I really didn't consider Twitter as publishing. I thought of it as communication.
It's an uneasy mix.
Writers, artists, intellectuals, academics, philosophers, musicians, people with independent minds and ideas ... are always the first targets of a purge.
Purges are carried out by those who would control "hearts and minds".
I'm just saying ... everyone's talking about Yahoo! and Google.
Twitter's under attack.
It's not happening in Second Life, it's real life.
That send button's looking at me. I'm posting this blog by email. Excuse me while I publish this and be damned.
Uprising reminds of Pink Floyd's Just Another Brick In The Wall: a 1982 anti-establishment anthem.
"The lad imagines himself a poet! ... poetry .... absolute rubbish laddy ... an acre is the area of a rectangle ...
