Any profound change in the nature of society ie The Sexual Revolution or the Industrial Revolution.

More particularly a popular uprising where people take control of their own lives, leading to the overthrow ofcapitalism and the state and its replacement by a society based on freedom and pleasure without end.

When Bill Gates will get hung from the nearest lamp post and we all organize ourselves into free collectives of geeks.(or something) A long time coming if you ask me

Dics 1, Track 14, The Beatles/1967-1970.
The song's guitar rhythm was actually taken from the original one George was playing for Hey Jude. Paul insisted on creating Hey Jude how he envisioned it hence the guitar was changed, however they kept it around and made it into Revolution. Written by Lennon/McCartney.
Revolution Inc. is an English based software company. They are most famous for having created the highly acclaimed Broken Sword adventure games, but their career actually started much earlier.

Their first game was called Lure of the Temptress. Set in a supernatural midieval setting, it pioneered what was to become Revolution's trademark game engine: the Virtual Theatre. With it, characters were able to move around the game world without being restricted to one area or one screen, as was often the case with adventure games around its era. Lure of the Temptress was released in 1992, and created little to no splash, despite being a pretty solid game.

Their next offering came two years later, and made a slightly bigger splash. The game Beneath a Steel Sky was this time set in a cyberpunk nightmare setting, and detailed the quest of kidnapped orphan Robert Foster to discover the sinister truth behind his abduction. Detailed comic book art by Dave Gibbons contributed to the already-superb mood of the story. Although the Virtual Theatre engine was not used to its full potential, the game triumphed by having a solid story, solid gameplay, and being one of the most entertaining adventure games in history.

The game that followed, Broken Sword - The Shadow of the Templars (known as Circle of Blood in the US, for no apparent reason whatsoever), became instantly known as the company's biggest success. A modern-day thriller, combining realistic character interaction with a solidly researched story.

The sequel, Broken Sword 2 - The Smoking Mirror, met with similar success. Although short and rushed towards the ending, it was a worthy sequel, which also marked the push of the Virtual Theatre into the Windows environment.

This is where my intimate knowledge of Revolution's history ends, although they have released more games after Broken Sword 2. The action-adventure game In Cold Blood generated a bit of concern amongst Revolution fans, because they were afraid Revolution were jumping on the 3D action bandwagon like everyone else, but the game ended up triumphant (according to reviews). A game based on Dreamworks' El Dorado cartoon also followed.

Their official website can be found at www.revolution.co.uk.

The problem with political revolutions is that, with a few exceptions, they don't work. The history of Revolution contains a few success stories, and dozens of failures.

North America

The United States of America is a very lucky place. The first democratic revolution in centuries occurred there, and it worked. A war was fought, and then power passed in an orderly fashion from the King to the new USA. There were relatively few reprisals, Thomas Hutchinson aside. It seems to have been remarkably simple.

Only when we look in more detail do we see how near a thing this was. Leaving aside the considerable probability of losing the war with Britain, the USA was nearly killed several times in its infancy. George Washington's troops, angry at Congress for not paying their salaries, suggested to Washington that he make himself a dictator. Had he not refused (and threatened to execute the officers making the suggestion for treason if they ever brought it up again), American democracy would have ended there and then. Later, Aaron Burr attempted to carve out his own kingdom from the western part of the US. Again, had his communications not been intercepted, an early fracturing might easily have kept the new-formed America weak and easily reconquerable. The Civil War was a final danger; the two major cultural groups which had united to defeat King George III had never really gotten along, and the War between the States was fought to determine whether or not they would remain cohesive.

Everyplace Else

The dangers that America narrowly avoided have been the ruin of most democratic revolutions since. The French Revolution degenerated into mass hysteria, mob rule, and dictatorship. The Russian Revolution, likewise, was quickly subverted by Lenin. China had Mao. Simon Bolivar's assorted South American revolutions all foundered on the fact that South Americans, unacquainted with self-government, had no idea what to do with freedom when they got it (mostly they elected dictators).

The Roundhead British Revolution under Oliver Cromwell set him up as Lord Protector. He then attempted to pass the office to his son, an act with clear suggestions of hereditary monarchy. It was not until the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that a "revolution" (and a typically calm, restrained, English one at that) would in Britain would bring actually democratic improvement.

Why?

What happened in America that didn't happen in all those other places? At this point we don't know, but we can identify several factors.

First, Americans had a tradition of self-government. This meant that when they were granted independence, they knew how to govern themselves and did it with only minor fuss. Compare to the abortive democracies of Bolivar.

America was an ocean away from its ruler. This meant that most of the oppressors were simply unavailable to purge. Contrast with France, where the aristocrats were right there in Paris to kill. America failed to turn into a bloodbath because there was hardly anyone around worth killing.

America had a low population density and almost no landless poor (proletariat). This fact made it difficult to form a proper mob in America; not enough people hanging around the cities with nothing to do. The occasional mob did form (the Whiskey Rebellion), for example, America by and large was ruled by its politicians.

Finally, we come to luck. America was lucky. We got Washington, and Russia got Lenin. Nothing except Washington's own honor could have stopped him from seizing power. Perhaps something about American society produced Washington, something that could be repeated, but we don't know what it was.

Other Ways to Get Democracy

Most of today's successful democracies came about not through bloody revolutions, but through one of two other agencies: bloodless revolution or externally enforced democracy.

Bloodless Revolution

The Indian revolution under Mahatma Gandhi is a key example of a bloodless revolution. It was not precisely bloodless, but all the blood came from the rebels. A successful campaign of passive resistance, conceived, led, and symbolized by Gandhi, pressed the British into withdrawing. Of course, this would have failed under bolder, more dictatorial oppressors, like Nazi's or Stalinists, but it proved sufficient to establish Indian independence. In India, there was no precedent of violent overthrow to serve as an excuse for dictators. The British pulled out voluntarily, leaving no opportunity for mob rule or execution of political enemies.

The Glorious Revolution was also a bloodless one. The change made was so apparently small as to scarcely deserve the name of revolution, but it was crucial: one king (William of Orange)was substituted for another (James II) at the demand of Parliament. This meant that the (democratic) Parliament had power over kings. After this limitation of the king, Britain became less and less a monarchy and more and more a democracy. In Britain, there was no single establishment of democracy; society grew more and more democratic over the years.

Externally Enforced Democracy

In the past few centuries, conquest has begun to become unfashionable. When a nation loses a war, it is no longer absorbed into the conquering nation. Especially after WWI and WWII, nations had their governments overthrown, but remained independent. Democracies sprung up among these nations because the traditional rulers have been removed but not replaced. Sometimes it works, as in the case of modern Italy. Sometimes it doesn't, as in the case of Weimar Germany.

Since at least the French Revolution, the word "revolution" has signified some sort of teleological progress towards whatever the revolutionaries considered to be the end-point of world history, be it the realization of the Rights of Man or the dictatorship of the proletariat. But linear progress is of course entirely alien to the meaning of the word, which is "to revolve"; clearly a fuse has been blown in our language.

This linguistic anomaly is a result of a change in the conception of politics which has not been matched by a change in the terms we use to talk about it. Platonic philosophy was based on the recurrence of all things through a natural cycle of growth and decay, a process Aristotle also interested himself in. Plato implied that the change from oligarchy to democracy to tyranny and then back to the start again took place in a predetermined cycle, whereas Aristotle disagreed; but both saw regime change as a never-ending process because nothing in the world was abiding. "Revolution" is a word fit to describe this process.

Modern western politics, on the other hand, is based on the idea that there can be constant progress and that man can construct political structures which will last indefinitely because they are the best structures. You hear a lot of talk about whether the rest of world is old enough to buy its one-way ticket to the "democratic revolution", but little appreciation that there might be an unwelcome return journey not only for them, but for the rest of us too. We ought to remember the original meaning of "revolution" when contemplating the breathtaking strides we have taken in political and economic life; it might be our turn to revolve again sooner than you might think.

BrevityQuest07

The assassin crept through the darkened halls of the palace. The alarms were meant to keep the anarchists and usurpers of power from breaching the walls, so none were installed on the interior doors and passageways.

At one point, a guard dog alerted and ran over to inspect the moving shadow. It sniffed around the stocking-clad feet and then wandered off to see if it could locate the obnoxious cat. Just as the shadow began to move again, the dog's master strode into the room. He stared directly at the human shape that froze into a statue, smiled, and headed off towards the hissing sounds and the occasional bark.

Exhaling loudly, the assassin continued to the bedroom of the dictator that ruled with a bloody iron fist. To prevent the hinges from squeaking, the portal opened just enough to allow the thin body to slip through.

Surprised to feel tears welling up, the assassin withdrew a steel and glass syringe from a leather pouch. The needle slipped in and the last rattling breath slipped out.

"I’m sorry, Daddy," she said. "It’s time for a revolution."

Still clutching her teddy bear, the assassin crept back to her bedroom to await a better world.


Brevity Quest 2017

Rev`o*lu"tion (?), n. [F. r'evolution, L. revolutio. See Revolve.]

1.

The act of revolving, or turning round on an axis or a center; the motion of a body round a fixed point or line; rotation; as, the revolution of a wheel, of a top, of the earth on its axis, etc.

2.

Return to a point before occupied, or to a point relatively the same; a rolling back; return; as, revolution in an ellipse or spiral.

That fear Comes thundering back, with dreadful revolution, On my defenseless head. Milton.

3.

The space measured by the regular return of a revolving body; the period made by the regular recurrence of a measure of time, or by a succession of similar events.

"The short revolution of a day."

Dryden.

4. Astron.

The motion of any body, as a planet or satellite, in a curved line or orbit, until it returns to the same point again, or to a point relatively the same; -- designated as the annual, anomalistic, nodical, sidereal, or tropical revolution, according as the point of return or completion has a fixed relation to the year, the anomaly, the nodes, the stars, or the tropics; as, the revolution of the earth about the sun; the revolution of the moon about the earth.

⇒ The term is sometimes applied in astronomy to the motion of a single body, as a planet, about its own axis, but this motion is usually called rotation.

5. Geom.

The motion of a point, line, or surface about a point or line as its center or axis, in such a manner that a moving point generates a curve, a moving line a surface (called a surface of revolution), and a moving surface a solid (called a solid of revolution); as, the revolution of a right-angled triangle about one of its sides generates a cone; the revolution of a semicircle about the diameter generates a sphere.

6.

A total or radical change; as, a revolution in one's circumstances or way of living.

The ability . . . of the great philosopher speedily produced a complete revolution throughout the department. Macaulay.

7. Politics

A fundamental change in political organization, or in a government or constitution; the overthrow or renunciation of one government, and the substitution of another, by the governed.

The violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree of the maladministration which has produced them. Macaulay.

⇒ When used without qualifying terms, the word is often applied specifically, by way of eminence, to: (a) The English Revolution in 1689, when William of Orange and Mary became the reigning sovereigns, in place of James II. (b) The American Revolution, beginning in 1775, by which the English colonies, since known as the United States, secured their independence. (c) The revolution in France in 1789, commonly called the French Revolution, the subsequent revolutions in that country being designated by their dates, as the Revolution of 1830, of 1848, etc.

 

© Webster 1913.

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