Smart Mobs - Thomas Ray Post

This is a paper I wrote for class that I thought I would share with others.

In his book, Smart Mobs, the next social revolution, Howard Rheingold paints a picture of where technology is today (circa, 2000 – 2002), the history of how we got to where we are today, and where he sees technology going. The book’s title concerns the following: “Smart mobs consist of people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know each other. The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devises that posses both communication and computing capabilities”. (1) To me Rheingold made the following positive points in his book:

• Mobile Technology is changing the world and giving consumers new ways to connect with friends, families and other communities.
• Mobile Technology is enabling consumers to mobilize as a group in order to bring about political and social change.
• The proliferation of computer chips in quantity, processing power and speed allows for the development of “smart” furniture, roadways, buildings and other objects that will allow consumers to interact in new and different ways to their environment.
• Wireless technology can be developed inexpensively which gives consumers access to the internet in places where cables can either not be laid (eg., Africa’s Tanzania or remote native American reservations in the Western United States) or in areas where consumers would prefer to be unwired (e.g., working from a park bench or at the beach).

Rheingold also makes the following points concerning the negative aspects of technology.

• Wireless technology can be used in unprecedented ways to monitor consumers’ activity from bits of phone conversation picked up on a street to the digital footprints of cell phones as the government triangulates on a person’s location.
• The threats to a consumer’s quality of life, when they live “in an always-on, hyper-connected culture” (2)
• The lack of direct contact with people and the lack of nuisance of language and tone can lead to misunderstandings or conflict.
• Taken to its logical extreme some have even questioned the need for a human body with its mortality and susceptibility to disease and instead suggested that a cyborg existence that transcends our body may be in order.

Rheingold raises so many questions and goes into so many different areas, all of which are relevant to us in 2008 that is hard to know where to start discussing this book. For example, I do not believe that “wearable computers” have really taken off, but I could be wrong. However, as an owner of an iphone, I believe I have all the technology that Steve Mann had as a cyborg in the book at his figure tips. For example, I use maps to find directions to any address I need to go to, I have a built-in ipod to listen to my music and in discussions, I have a search component to give me instant answers the way Rheingold, described how Thad Starner used his wearable computer to “look up something online” while in middle of a discussion. (3)

One of the interesting areas that Rheingold discussed in his book is the power of “Smart Mobs” to influence social and political change. Rheingold describes how texting mobs in the Philippines where able to bring down President Joseph Estrada and force him from office. He also described how Smart Mobs in Seattle were able to mobilize quickly and disrupt the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in 1999.

I was reminded of Rheingold’s Smart Mobs this week, when I read where crowds on Twitter, a mobile social networking site, were able to disrupt the keynote address at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, TX, between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and journalist Sarah Lacy. For those who do not know, Mark Zuckerberg is 23 years old and he invented Facebook while still at Harvard as an undergraduate. Last year, Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook which gives the site a $15 Billion dollar value (4) Apparently, Lacy, used an informal friendly interview style that did not sit well with the developers and programmers at the festival. Additionally, some in the audience believed that Lacy was not prepared for the interview and did not ask meaningful questions. Wired.com did a good job covering the whole thing and I have posted their URL below.

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/03/sxsw-mark-zucke.html

Notes,
1) Smart Mobs, by Howard Rheingold, page xii, Basic Books, 2002
2) Rheingold, Smart Mobs, page 190
3) Ibid, page 110
4) Source: NY Post, October 26, 2007, quoting RBC Capital Markets, analyst David Brink