The Revolution Will Not be Televised…But It May Be Tweeted
Jun 16th, 2009 by msdanielle
As spoken word artist and author Gil Scott-Heron once said:
You will not be able to stay home, brother
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out
…Because the revolution will not be televisedThe revolution will be no re-run brothers
The revolution will be live
That was 1971. In a time when consumer identity was truly beginning to either mirror or oppose the images that were spewed out from TV land, subcultures of anti-establishmentarianist dissidents were forming around the country, and around the world. Scott-Heron’s revolution was about self-identity, self-awareness and self-awakening. Identity isn’t found from without, it is found within.
His concept that the revolution against superficiality and mass consumption begins from within one’s self is almost more relevant today with the collapse of the financial institutions. The public’s passive acceptance of its desire to live outside of its means only fueled the collapse more quickly. It was the zenith of what plagues us in Scott-Heron’s poem; the zenith of our inevitable downfall.
So what does this have to do with Twitter? Technology is changing, advancing, and growing by the minute. We no longer rely on TV to bring us our daily dose of advertising. The global youth is more savvy, can’t be “sold” the way generations before them could. Today’s youth puts out information, pulls information from where they can find it, and shares it with people who they’ve never even met face to face.
Twitter, along with Flickr, YouTube, and a host of other social media sites, have helped angry voters in Iran get out their messages and images from the last few days, in ways they would never have been able to even a couple years ago. People are making their voices heard using real-time technology. The world is aware, connected, and informed. The message isn’t what’s for dinner, what will make you thin, or why no one likes you. Whatever your beliefs, soak it all up and as my friend Jimmy says, “be mindful.” This is reality; this is life; this is history. This is no re-run, my friends, this is now.
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Nice one D!Gil Scott-Heron what a poet! Love that “Message in a Bottle”
keen observation. in the iranian situation the people are now the media. in my opinion i have never looked highly upon twitter until now and how it is being used now in iran. think the developers envisioned this?
hey guys, thanks for the comments.
@jpeezy – have you ever used twitter? it’s actually very useful bc you choose how you want to use it. i’m sure there are influencers in music and politics that are on twitter that would be useful for you. i’m not sure the twitter founders envisioned their tool to be used for emergency communication, or to be used to avert censorship, but during its growth i’m sure it dawned on them that there are few limits on what people would/could use it for. it’s real-time communication, with real-time search results (you can find out what’s happening sooner through search.twitter.com than you can through google.com), relating to anything anybody wants to say. check out the TED Talks link i posted on my facebook, “How Twitter can make history”:
http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html
I just now came across this from affbuzz, and I have to say that I completely agree with how technology is changing the equation, although I wonder whether the notion of savvy youth is overrated. If technology is changing how we consume media, then success in marketing within a social media world is going to hinge on how advertisers can get their message across without seeming like douches. Someone’s buying all the new phones and ringtones and cars and clothes and bling that the savvy youth is consuming, and it’s not always clueless parents and others that have been duped by old advertising models. I suspect even the coolest cats are consuming at least some advertising – but it’s just not setting off any alarm bells.
To the other point, since it’s a couple months after you wrote this, you know how twitter became something of a lifeline for those oppressed in Iran. Just goes to show you how some technologies can have unanticipated benefits – and in this case – on an international scale.
Nicely done!