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Smart Mobs, Swarms, and Flash Crowds

Posted by michael on from the flight-of-the-bumblebee dept.

PizzaFace writes "Personal communication devices always allowed people to communicate easily and to coordinate their plans at the spur of the moment. As PCDs became widespread, they allowed their owners to converge rapidly in large groups, for purposes social or political. Now something else is happening. Ubiquitous PCDs give each owner multiple simultaneous opportunities for communication or convergence. People surf their PCD network from one conversation to another, and physically surf the most promising of the gatherings to which the network invites them. Their web of social contacts is as broad as the globe and as shallow as a cell phone's keystroke. What happens when people become nodes on a network? Joel Garreau reports provocatively in the Washington Post. His sample is skewed by Washington's summer influx of interns, who come from around the country to work for little or no pay in part because they're chasing 'peak experiences,' and who have lots of disposable time and energy, no local roots or tethers, and an unusually large network of like-wired acquaintances." I think the conventional (and most descriptive) term for this behavior is flash crowd.

4 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    CLiT is gay

  2. Eye and face contact by SpatchMonkey · · Score: 1, Troll

    The unfortunate result of these sorts of devices is that is takes out of practice the social skills of those who use them.

    Like the stereotypical pale-skinned nerd masterbating over Linux in his mother's basement, people who tend to use these new PDA technologies are seriously missing out on the more traditional forms of human contact.

    A wink, a nod and a smile can convey so much more than "asl?"

    1. Re:Eye and face contact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      This is true... as the Pimple faced turd that is trying to mount a sexual device to their windows box in their father's basement at age 30 because they like how bill gives it to them in the rear... they look like social outcases and freaks

  3. What about health risks by PhysicsGenius · · Score: -1, Troll
    We've all seen what happens when people are exposed to second-hand smoke--what about second hand EM radiation? There are significant reasons to believe that "personal communication devices" (why not just say "cellphones"?) cause cancer, increasing the density in a crowd can only lead to further disaster.

    This is exactly why I take my daily dose of extract of hyperia seed. Traditional, invasive medicine rejects it but the Chinese have been using it for centuries to ward off cancer.