Not So Weird After All

Electronic News, August 16, 1999 by Jonathan Cassell

It might seem inappropriate to dedicate space in a major weekly electronics trade newspaper to a personage no less silly and irreverent than musical satirist "Weird" Al Yankovic. However, as unlikely as it seems, Yankovic is a highly accurate barometer of social trends. And when Yankovic turns his comic eye to the Internet, the PC, the microprocessor and the culture that surrounds those technologies, it behooves all of us in the electronics industry to sit up and take notice.

Yankovic's new song--titled It's all About the Pentiums--lampoons the attitudes of computer geeks, who judge others on the basis of computer skills and hardware. Accompanied by a rap music beat, Yankovic sings:

   In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user You've got your own newsgroup,
   alt.total-loser Your mother board melts when you try to send a fax Where'd
   you get your CPU, in a box of Cracker Jacks?

In the 1980s, Yankovic established a reputation as the music industry's clown price, famous for his parodies of pop stars who had embraced the new entertainment form of the music video. Ironically, Yankovic's parodies served to validate the celebrities he made fun of. Everyone knew a song and a video was a hit if Yankovic lampooned it.

More importantly, Yankovic's video parodies validated the rise of MTV and cable television as a major force in popular culture and media. MTV was the first all-music network and revolutionized entertainment by adding a visual element to popular songs that could be enjoyed 24 hours a day. The fact that Yankovic's satire had such a broad appeal demonstrated the influence that MTV and cable TV wielded on the worldwide psyche.

With Yankovic's new song he is doing the same thing for computers and the Internet that he did for MTV and cable television. The singer now has an entire Web-site devoted to "It's all About the Pentiums," complete with lyrics and the video in downloadable formats.

The site reflects the shift the music business is now experiencing from radio and television to the Internet. The MP3 downloadable music format has been the most exciting thing to hit the record industry since MTV. The Internet will be the medium that launches the Michael Jacksons and Madonnas of the next millennium.

However, more significantly, Yankovic's attention validates the rise in importance of the Internet itself. In the late 1990s, the Internet has replaced cable television as the zeitgeist. The fact that Yankovic has found the Web, PCs and microprocessors to be worthy topics for satire indicates how important, how recognizable, how comfortable and how ubiquitous they have become. Not long ago, few people outside the electronics industry could name a single microchip. Now the name Pentium has earned a permanent spot in the lexicon.

It's clear now: Microprocessors and the other elements that comprise the Internet are no longer technologies, they are entertainers. They don't belong to the electronics industry anymore, they are the property of the world. This is the essential truth that technology firms will have to face in the future. This is the very serious lesson that "Weird" Al has imparted to us.