Customer Reviews

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

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At the very end of the book, the author quotes James Madison as carved into the marble of the Library of Congress: "...a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." And there it is--Howard Rheingold has documented the next level of the Internet, in which kids typing 60 words a minute with one thumb, "swarms" of people converging on a geospatial node guided only by their cell phones; virtual "CIAs" coming together overnight to put together massive (and accurate) analysis with which to take down a corporate or government position that is fradulent--this is the future and it is bright.

As I go back through the book picking out highlights, a few of the following serve to capture the deep rich story being told by this book--breakthroughs coming from associations of amateurs rather than industry leaders; computer-mediated trust brokers--collective action driven by reputation; detailed minute-by-minute information about behaviors of entire populations (or any segment thereof); texting as kid privacy from adult hearing; the end of the telephone number as relevant information; the marriage of geospatial and lifestyle/preference information to guide on the street behavior; the perennial problem of "free riders" and how groups can constrain them; distributed processing versus centralized corporate lawyering; locations with virtual information; shirt labels with their transportation as well as cleaning history (and videos of the sex partners?)--this is just mind-boggling.

Finally, the author deserves major credit for putting all this techno-marvel stuff into a deep sociological and cultural context. He carefully considers the major issues of privacy, control, social responsibility, and group behavior. He ends on very positive notes, but also notes that time is running out--we have to understand where all this is going, and begin to change how we invest and how we design everything from our clothing to our cities to our governments.

This is an affirming book--the people that pay taxes can still look forward to the day when they might take back control of their government and redirect benefits away from special interests and back toward the commonwealth. Smart mobs, indeed.

"Smart mobs" sounds like an oxymoron: after all, what's more impulsive or uncontrolled than a mob? It's typical of Howard Rheingold to throw down such a brightly-colored rhetorical gauntlet, and then to describe how smart mobs are emerging in places as diverse as Tokyo, anti-globalization protests, and virtual communities. Forget images of mobs storming the Bastille, or rioters: smart mobs are a new kind of social organization, made possible by real-time, connective technologies-- cell phones, SMS, pagers, and the Web. If old-fashioned mobs were just giant assemblies of individuals, communications technologies give them nervous systems, the ability to coordinate their actions, to work together, and respond to changes and challenges. Smart mobs are not automatically good or evil. The crowds that brought down Phillipine president Joseph Estrada responded to calls put out via SMS. Anti-globalization protesters have been avidly embraced network technologies. So has Al Qaeda.

Some readers will doubtless find familiar ideas in "Smart Mobs:" for whatever odd reason, 2002 has been The Year of Books About Self-Organizing Social Networks, thanks to writers as different at Steven Johnson ("Emergence") and Mark Taylor ("The Moment of Complexity"). But Rheingold is scrupulous and generous about acknowleding his influences; besides, the real value of his book lies in his own fieldwork, and his reflections on what the smart mob phenomenon will mean for business, politics, and social life. Even if your copy of Wolfram is dog-eared and the spine is weak from re-reading (and let's face it, whose isn't), it's still worth following Rheingold through Shibuya, Helsinki, and the Web...

In Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold catalogues the technologies that are converging to change the way we live: mobile communications, social networks, distributed processing and pervasive computing. He does a good job of identifying and explaining these and predicting what it will mean when they get together. This makes for an interesting read, but I'm afraid I still found the book maddening.

The worst thing is that a whole half the book is in quotes (or worse, block quotes) from other people and their dissertations or promotional materials. This makes the book lack a singular voice and is very disconcerting. Rheingold not only attributes everything to a fault, he also has the bad habit of explaining where he interviewed each person, what they ate, what funny thing the interviewee had in their office. This makes for ponderous, stalling prose that is painful to read.

He also makes the Lessig-inspired mistake of dividing the world into two camps: the government and big media are lumped on one side, and heroic no-property anarchists are placed in the other. He's right to point out that big media's vested interests are a creature of government, but he doesn't get that that really isn't capitalism. A true market is the ultimate form of the mediated cooperation he pines for.

If you are a techno-cultural geek, you have to read this book. But take it with a grain of salt, and brace yourself for plenty of minutiae.

Howard Rheingold has impeccable timing. In the mid 80s, aware that personal computers were changing the way we think, he wrote Tools for Thought. In the early 90s, he explored how emerging digital networks were changing social groups in The Virtual Community. Twice now he's put words to important social/digital trends, years before they reach critical mass.

So when Rheingold writes a book, it's a good idea to pay attention. His new book, Smart Mobs, takes a hard look at what happens when networked virtual communication goes mobile. And it's a mind-bending read.

Consider for a moment that, for a good many years, personal computers sat in offices and living rooms totally disconnected from each other. It seems quaint now, but I remember that time. And if you can remember the sea change that happened in the world when all those computers (and the people behind them) got connected to the internet, you can get some inkling of the change Rheingold predicts is on its way when that same networked computational power goes mobile.

We're in for another whirlwind of change in technology, and with it, a change in the way communities come together and express themselves. The book is a captivating exploration of what these new technologies are (think internet-enabled, location-aware mobile phones and PDAs) and how they're already shaping communities around the world.

Howard's writing is engaging and deep, and the book is an evenhanded exploration of the new technology, both good and bad. If you want a glimpse of the virtual communities of the future, pick up his book and follow the ongoing conversation at smartmobs.com.

(Reprinted from designforcommunity.com with permission.)

Rheingold writes from the perspective of the enthusiast. He is still trying to keep up with the kids and shares their distain for authority. I wonder if Howard ever met an anarchist he didn't like.

So, we get to 'run with the pack' for a while. It seems the kids are constructing a society of self-organizing, ad-hoc networks founded on wearable wireless computers, mediated by privacy protection algorithms. Their networks are always on and location aware. The computer is mutating into a universal remote-control wand and the purpose is having fun.

If it's not fun, the kids don't do it. The kids find their friends via the internet, keep in touch via cell phones and turn the city into a game board with GPS. It is all amazing and new.

What does it mean? It means more "wealth, knowledge and civil society". There will be new forms of "sex, commerce, entertainment and conflict." The danger comes from the adult crowd, the 'big brother' bureaucracies that will want to redirect all this creativity into a straight-jacket.

It seems the decision we have to make involves our use of the 'commons', or in modern parlance, the 'internet'. Will we allow the 'free riders' to sink the ship? Will we allow the fence builders to steal our playground?

To engage in the debate, Rheingold does a good job of teaching enough chaos theory to make sense of the issues. You might get tired of him invoking the prisoner's dilemma and 'swarm intelligence', but they are interesting ideas. It's a bit thin, but the book is rushing through so many gadgets, inventors and theories that I didn't mind.

Personally, I'm not sure there is anything 'new' to be invented about sex and entertainment. The most important exploration is the discovery of self. 'Sex, commerce, entertainment and conflict' may provide ever changing milestones in that journey, but I doubt our experience of despair and wonder are any different than they were 1000 years ago. Would a network of wearable computers help Hamlet make up his mind? Would Hamlet have wanted assistance? Additionally, the reader ought to be aware that the themes elucidated by Rheingold: 1) interconnectedness, 2) compression of time and 3) demassification are commonly used in defense department articles on the 'modern warrior'. It's not all fun and games.

There are few books that fulfill their promise to describe tomorrow. This is one of them. The "texting tribes" ride the same currents as our "post-literate" age, using technology to augment and implement our human need for communication.

Rheingold describes a coming new world where one-to-many communication is focused on "doing" things and where the "one" can be anyone with a mobile phone. Teens and protesters are using texting (a function available on many cell phones) both to "hang" with each other and to coordinate movements.

What he has seen in Japan and Finland is becoming commonplace in America's public schools as teenagers flock together in texting "virtual" space more easily than they can in "real" space. Recent reports show that texting is becoming as popular as the telephone -- and it is certainly more stealthy for those seeking to circumvent nosey parents.

This is an important book for public libraries. Our public is changing rapidly. This is a window into what is likely to occur.

Executive Director
Franklin Park (Illinois) Public Library

Howard Rheingold has the gift of being able to tell the future. Not like a gypsy peering into a crystal ball, but like an astute observer with the brilliant ability to integrate and analyze seemingly disparate phenomena into a cohesive look at the world ahead.

Rheingold has been involved with computer technology for enough decades to be able to tell the difference between hype and significant events, and his experience shines through in Smart Mobs. I found gems of insight in every chapter of Smart Mobs, and the book has changed the way I look at the networked world.

As a book reviewer, I tons of business/technology books in the mail. Most get skimmed and discarded. Smart Mobs is a keeper.

By reading this review you're participating in smart mob technology. Congratulations.

I try to stay abreast of science and media technologies, but occasionally a book comes across my desk (I'm a journalist) that puts the pieces together in a way that induces epiphanies in readers - casting a shadow in their minds that sends their thoughts to the book again and again.

In "Smart Mobs" Howard Rheingold looks at the wireless ubiquitous vomitous glorious instruments that continue to invade our lives, and asks some highly relevant questions about how they'll reshape our social structures, what it will mean to always be connected, and what threats this technology poses to "individuality", human rights, health, and sanity. He reminds us in a McLuhanesque way that any time you use a tool to change the world, it also changes you.

Digital telepathy, augmented reality, computers coordinating human interaction - it's all here. It's all big.

This book suffers from incohesive writing and lacks a clear framework that covers the theme of smart mobs. The sequence of chapters does not provide a progressive build-up of a framework of any sort. Even more, the sequence inside each chapter does not carry the reader towards any defined theme. On one section the author describes teenagers in Finland sending text messages, then he jumps to his meeting with a company executive, then jumps to describing the mobile phone standards in Europe, etc.

The only common thread among sections in chapters and among the chapters is the smart mobs theme, obviously, but the author does not break down clearly this central theme into its parts. This makes for a very confusing and bothersome reading.

Smart Mobs are dynamic groups of people who can act together cooperatively even if they are complete strangers. Their communication is facilitated by a new wave of wireless, mobile, portable computing devices. Howard Rheingold provokes us to foresee a future where people spontaneously interact and exchange ideas in a manner that will transform how we work, play, trade, govern, and create.

Rheingold cogently explores examples of what he refers to as a "social tsunami". Special attention is given to mobile telephones which are transforming how youth exercise their social power. Teenage "thumb tribes" have developed new ways of communicating using SMS text messaging in Tokyo and Helsinki. Spontaneous groups coordinated by SMS messages had a more serious impact in the Philippines in January of 2001 when groups of protestors responding to SMS messages managed to play a primary role in overthrowing then President Joseph Estrada.

Much attention is also given to networked PC's and how supercomputers, open source software and the mobile internet are facilitating social networking. Rheingold adroitly explains how these tools can be both weapons of social control and resistance.

Perhaps the most provocative ideas revolve around the fact that we now have access to information about each other as never before. He explores privacy and trust issues and appears particularly concerned with surveillance web-sites, software and the electronic "bread crumb" trails that we are unaware we are leaving.

Overall, Rheingold expertly weaves his experiences, interviews with experts and solid research to elucidate his interest in how human behavior will change as a result of the latest technological advances. He convincingly argues that our changing notion of community needs to be used in a beneficial manner to create a more humane and sustainable world.

This book is a must read for academics, corporate types and anyone interested in how technology can promote grassroots social change.