The Age of Information

This is a public service announcement
 Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering
 The age of information
 It's perfectly safe
 If we all take a few basic precautions
 May I make some observations?
 Axiom 1 for the world we've begun:
 Your reputation used to depend on
 What you concealed
 Now it depends on what you reveal
 The age of secretive mandarins who creep on heels of tact is dead:
 We are all players now in the great game of fact instead
 So since you can't keep your cards to your chest
 I'd suggest you think a few moves ahead
 As one does when playing a game of chess
 Axiom 2 to make the world new:
 Paranoia's simply a word for seeing things as they are
 Act as you wish to be seen to act
 Or leave for some other star
 Somebody is prying through your files, probably
 Somebody's hand is in your tin of Netscape magic cookies
 But relax: if you're an interesting person
 Morally good in your acts
 You have nothing to fear from facts
 Axiom 3 for transparency:
 In the age of information the only way to hide facts
 Is with interpretations, there is no way to stop the free exchange
 Of idle speculations
 In the days before communication privacy meant staying at home
 Sitting in the dark with the curtains shut unsure whether to answer the phone
 But these are different times, now the bottom line
 Is that everyone should prepare to be known
 Most of your friends will still like you fine
 X said to Y what A said to B
 B wrote an E-mail and sent it to me
 I showed C and C wrote to A:
 Flaming world war three
 Cut, paste, forward, copy
 CC, go with the flow
 Our ambition should be to love what we finally know
 Or, if it proves unloveable, simply to go
 Axiom 4 for this world I adore:
 Our loyalties should shift in view
 According to what we know
 And who we are speaking to
 Once I was loyal to you, and prepared to be against information
 Now I am loyal to information, maybe I'm disloyal to you
 My loyalty becomes more complex and cubist with every new fact I learn
 It depends who I'm speaking to
 And who they speak to in turn
 Axiom 5 for information workers who wish to stay alive:
 Supply, never withhold, the information requested
 With total disregard for interests
 Personal and vested
 Chinese whispers was an analogue game
 Where the signal degraded between brain and brain
 Digital whispers is the same in reverse
 The word we spread gets better, not worse
 Better, not worse
 X said to Y what A said to B
 B wrote an E-mail and sent it to me
 I showed C and C wrote to A:
 Flaming world war three
 Cut, paste, forward, copy
 CC, go with the flow
 Our ambition should be to love what we finally know
 Or, if it proves unloveable, simply to go