Oh, great. Now, not only will AOL's obnoxious junk mail infiltration be scaled up -- way up -- it'll be taking on the guise of the already overexposed Tweety & Crew.

"I tawt I taw a puddy tat! I diyd! I diyd! Wid AO-ehw Onwine, I c'n downwoad aw da picters of dat mean owe' puddy tat I wand, fwom AO-ehw Time Wawna's, dubboyoo-dubboyou-dubboyoo, dot, WEownEVWEEDING, dot, com."

Worse that that, it'll work. Every schlub in the world is already in love with one speech impediment or another, whether it belongs to Tweety, Tasmanian, Daffy, Foghorn, Elmer, Marvin, or Sylvester, so I can only imagine how the world will react to the impending Looney media barrage.

"Honey? Why did you order six sets of the AOL Time Warner series, "Unexplainable Chatrooms?"

"Because that's all I could afford."

"But…you can only possible use one set. What're you going to do with the rest?"

"Who cares? I just HAVE to buy them. How can I not, when they're endorsed by a whirling, slobbering, feral, incoherent beast? The Tasmanian Devil says volume one, 'Urp! Taste good.'"

I almost feel sorry for any company that doesn't have, by even a vague or distant degree of consanguinity, a relation to Looney Tunes or Disney. That is, until I realize that no such company exists, at least none of notable size. Even those mom & pop stands, the ones too small for detection by Megalomeration Corporadar, need only grow to ensure absorption by the ever-hungry pelf sponge of one of several Ultraseizeitrons.

Even those remaining few, the battling Illuminati of all corporations, the giant, thousand-eyed, million-armed, billion-dollar monstrosities that exist well beyond the reach of any human guidance or moral, even those are going to be on the endangered species list soon. It's only a matter of time before the realization of their enormous financial mass causes them to fall victim of their own economic gravity. Attracted to each other like enormous, gelatinous planets, they will spin around each other, locked in a winless battle until -- SPLORCH -- they merge. None will escape. Eventually, all will merge to become:

UBIQUITEX GLOBALOMNICRON™ "WE are the world. YOU are the children."

The nexus of every financial transaction, Ubiquitex Globalomnicron™ will become the heartbeat of our existence and the central nervous system of our lives. By allowing the economy to continue (instead of appointing a merit/credit system based on the assumed worth of a person's soul), U.G. will gently and deftly manipulate the tides of desire and necessity. In doing so, the ethereal existence of all things monetary (credit, money, and the concept of value) will be shifted into the ownership of not the economy of the people, but Ubiquitex Globalomnicron™. Using their resources (that of every last point of value in all of the world), U.G. will buy out all of the countries whose governments are in financial deficit, starting with the United States of America.

The transition ought to be smooth. By then, most people will recall government only as something akin to The Elks Club, where a bunch of ornery, white-haired men grumble about the pathetic state of the world. The American Flag will be a colorful and zany "Animaniacs" storyboard with a scroll on the bottom that reads the Latin phrase, "Qua un noctoredus," (what a maroon) in honor of all the men who so complacently sold the U.S. to U.G.

But seriously, folks…

"Media," in its most general definition, has always been the way we humans have interfaced with the world in which we live. Be it via cave paintings, weekly chroniclers, or television, it has long since been our habit to communicate the ideas and actions of the one or few to the eyes, ears and minds of the many. Today, in a world born and bred of media, where movie stars are more revered than doctors and Star Wars is better known than World Wars, we interface in a number of different ways, accepting information through the format most comfortable to the individual.

The announced merger between America Online, the most used Internet service provider in the U.S., and Time Warner, an age-old corporate hybrid responsible for a large chunk of the media we are exposed to, is an event that may have been forever etched into the portion of time in which we currently reside. For numerous reasons, as all of us John e-Publics go about our daily lives, we keep one eye on AOLTW and patiently await an "occurrence" with the giddy anticipation of a preteen on that first, slow climb to the zenith of a roller coaster. Something cool is about to happen. We don't know what is going to happen, but it'll definitely be something cool.

Now that the two companies, each from polar ends of the media spectrum, have met, they have no doubt begun some sort of courtship ritual in which one half of the company tries to hold dominance over the other and all of the employees have to vie for the best office space all over again. After a short period, the two companies will determine who does what with how much, all of the dust will settle, and a small team of very special engineers will begin laying out plans of how to go about intertwining and reinventing the ways in which people typically interface with the world. Thus begins conception of something very cool.

With that notion already spreading and growing like kudzu across the business-scape of the world, CEOs everywhere are soiling their pants with high anxiety. While John e-Public is watching the development and turnout of AOLTW like an action/suspense flick, the world

business leaders, specifically the direct competitors of AOLTW, know that the star of the "flick," born of the two loving companies, will be some type of Godzilla and it's going to topple adversarial businesses as easily as the skyscrapers of Tokyo.

What slick new interface will this Godzilla come in the form of? That is unknown as of yet, of course. The gestation period has yet to begin. But you can be sure that when it comes, it's going to be a green, thirty feet tall, flame-throwin', noise-makin', thing-smashin', digitally-connected, remote-control-operated, prime-time-WebTV-syndicated, sensory-input-in-every-orifice-mandated GIANT that is difficult not to look at and IMPOSSIBLE to escape. Will we all simply be subsumed and driven to subservience by the incomparable strength of The Godzilla Interface? Well, no, because that never happens. As always, just as Godzilla begins to spin into a rabid frenzy of insane destruction, Mothra, or some other such foam rubber creature, comes along and does something weird.

These "Mothra" products are probably already in the works as we speak. Companies all over the world are pairing up like swimming buddies at summer camp in a slap-dash attempt to exchange what technological advances they have in a preemptive step to keeping up with the strength of the unborn Godzilla Interface. Unfortunately, AOLTW has a hell of a head start on everybody else, so anything thrown out onto the market in an attempt to top (or even mimic) AOLTW's inevitable InYerFace Interface will come into being two steps behind the pace. Two vital steps that will cause a product to appear second hand, cut-rate, or just plain bad, forcing it to fizzle down into the same categories as ColecoVision, BetaMax, and "Karate Kid 2." That, and... Godzilla never loses.

But! Mothra will still do the job of distracting Godzilla from destroying metropolitan Tokyo. Let the second-rate products hit the fan, and keep 'em coming. There are going to be dozens of companies, probably a good deal of them freshly merged, pitching their Mothra products at The Godzilla Interface in hopes that theirs will win the prize of getting to destroy Tokyo (and all of the businesses therein) themselves. By doing so, AOLTW will have no choice but to improve The Godzilla Interface constantly to keep from being toppled. To compete, Mothra Interfaces will have to get stronger, as well.

And the battle is going to be the greatest spectacle John e-Public has seen to date. The quantity, quality, and diversity of the products to come, in order to win your heart and wallet, will be monumental in all respects... just to maintain pace with the norm. Get ready to be dazzled as Ubiquitex Globalomnicron™ pays top dollar for some of the most brilliant minds in the world to design and create a collection of the most dazzling and useful products the world has yet to see. It's gonna be fun. We get to watch The Media Revolution.

Post Script:

By the time you read this, you'll have already been saturated with the news of America Online Time Warner and all the hubbub will have soaked your brain and made you numb. Just imagine, though, how overstuffed with carefully chosen information you're going to be when The Godzilla Interface is unleashed upon YOU.

Copyright © 2000 Jason Katzwinkel. All Rights Reserved

Jason Katzwinkel is a guy from Chicago who lives in a shoe. He has so little time, he doesn't know what to do. Eat more chicken.