Smart Mobs

curtisfrye writes " I've read and enjoyed two of Howard Rheingold's previous books, so I was looking forward to Smart Mobs. The first of the other two books, The Virtual Community, chronicled the early days of The Well (an online service in San Francisco), while Virtual Reality looked at VR technologies. As Howard told me in an interview a few weeks ago (see the link at the end of this review), he was one of the first people writing trade books about how MUDs, ARPAnet, and other online technologies affected society. He also confided in me that part of the reason he started writing about this stuff was so he could justify to his wife all the time he spent online. I, for one, am glad she saw the wisdom of his ways." Read on for Frye's dissection of Rheingold's latest work, Smart Mobs. Smart Mobs author Howard Rheingold pages 288 publisher Perseus Books rating 92% reviewer Curtis Frye ISBN 0738206083 summary As the possibilities for a wireless future unfold, Rheingold argues for an open network we can use to our best advantage.

The central thesis of Smart Mobs is that wireless communication technologies offer a new way for folks to combine their knowledge and energy. As Howard says in the book's introduction:

"If the transition period we are entering in the first decade of the twenty-first century resembles the advent of PCs and the Internet, the new technology regime will turn out to be an entirely new medium, not simply a means of receiving stock quotes or email on the train or surfing the Web while walking down the street. Mobile Internet, when it really arrives, will not be just a way to do old things while moving. It will be a way to do things that couldn't be done before." (p. xiv)

I've done my share of pie in the sky predicting based on what other people have written, so I appreciate it when a writer takes the time to find out what's happening on the ground with regard to the new technologies they're writing about. As it turns out, Howard spent quite a bit of time in Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, and Redmond (with Microsoft's resident online sociologist) finding out how people behave in countries with more advanced wireless communication grids and standards that let people send text messages to any wireless-equipped device (not just to users on the same network as in the US). Those stories, and the personalities driving them, are all chronicled in Smart Mobs.

As engaging as Howard is as a writer, I couldn't give his work such a high rating if I didn't feel his book was something a literate but not necessarily technically sophisticated reader could pick up and, having read it, understand the forces at work. Fortunately, it's all there. I'd imagine that most all of the folks who buy Smart Mobs will know about Moore's Law, which states that the number of computing elements that could be fit in a given space would double every eighteen months. There are other forces at work, though, and Howard lists the three other "laws" that apply to wireless networking in a social context:

• Sarnoff's Law, which states that the value of a broadcast network is proportionate to the number of viewers.
• Metcalfe's Law, which states that the value of a network where each node can reach every other node grows with the square of the number of nodes.
• Reed's Law, which states that, for a network where members of the network can form groups within the network, the value of that network will grow exponentially. That is, the value of the network is equal to the number of nodes raised to the power of the number of nodes, instead of just the square of the number of nodes.

Web logs ("blogs"), eBay, and other online communities are examples of how users have made the Internet a network that conforms to Reed's Law.

So what's not to like about a new wireless Internet where the users are free to roam and create their own groups, spread their information, and share resources? From the point of view of the communication operators (a.k.a. the phone companies), they see little good coming out of creating a medium where they give up their powerful position as information gatekeepers. And, of course, there are vested financial interests on the part of the companies that have leased the rights to different parts of the radio frequency spectrum, even though there are technologies that can avoid interference and make sure all devices can "play nice."

On the political side, wireless technologies have had tremendous impacts, speeding the downfall of a government in the Philippines and being used to coordinate action during the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle. I wouldn't be too surprised if there are plans in place to black out on civilian wireless networks on an emergency basis in case of similar activity in the U.S..

We're taking the first baby steps toward a new wireless network, but there's a lot to be determined, both technologically and in terms of the freedoms we'll enjoy in using the network. Smart Mobs is a wonderful introduction to the issues at hand, and Howard Rheingold makes a powerful argument for an open network we can use to our best advantage.

Curtis D. Frye is the editor and chief reviewer of Technology and Society Book Reviews. He is also the author of three online courses and ten books , including Privacy-Enhanced Business from Quorum Books. You can purchase Smart Mobs from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Unlikely.

[The Terrorists]

Folks like us are sitting around while these networks are tapped, controlled, redirected and shaped by hostile government forces.

If the sum of knowledge is available in a smart mob, then this knowledge is also available to any hostile individual that taps into the mob network. The information's quality is only as good as its most trustworthy member.

Re:Unlikely.

[oldzoot]

Bullshit. Publicly available cryptography maintain the value of these networks for socially relevant use, beyond the economical capability of the governmnet to monitor. The technologies for building the networks are available as comodities, and the value of the networks exceed the cost of implementation by orders of magnetude. Of course, getting people off their collective asses to actually do this is probably only really accomplished by organizations such as Al Quaeda.

Z

Re:Unlikely.

[Howard Rheingold]

I certainly didn't ignore the surveillance implications of emerging technologies. The final chapter, "Always-On Panopticon or Cooperation Amplifier" gets into the surveillance implications.

Re:Unlikely.

[jeddak]

Don't you mean that the information's quality is only as good as its LEAST trustworthy member?

Re:Unlikely.

[meringuoid]

Don't you mean that the information's quality is only as good as its LEAST trustworthy member?

Not if people can identify and select in favour of those most trustworthy people. How they do it might vary - on the internet, chances are you'll pick out bbc.co.uk as a reliable news source based on their offline reputation.

Or a system might arise whereby the users themselves select particularly informative, insightful, interesting or funny posts and mark them up as worthy of attention, while reducing the level of priority given to trolls and flamebaiters.

Or you might have a facility in whatever software you use to access this information to filter the data based on how much you trust the source. Scoring, killfiling, whatever.

Re:Unlikely.

[pstemari]

meringuoid has got the gist of the matter. In a large group with reliable means of identification, networks of trust evolve based on past performance and real-world reality checks. Without the reliable identification, though, you rapidly get the worst of Usenet, especially if the cost of access is minimal and once an identity has been discredited another one can be created instantly.

Re:Unlikely.

[cosmosis]

Hi Howard,

I'll use this oppurtunity to tell you I thoroughly enjoyed your book. So much so, that I was inspired to create my own blog devoted to the issues surrounding it.

Planet P Weblog

Re:Unlikely.

[Howard Rheingold]

Thanks. Useful blog. I will check it from time to time.

Re:Unlikely.

[plover]

I think jeddak's point is that a subversive member of a network can simultaneously provide top quality looking information (true-looking or at least not provably false data), turn in or denounce fellow members, sow dissent amongst the group's leadership and report on illicit activities.

I would think a subversive is harder to detect on-line, as any on-line credentials these days can be easily forged. For example, am I a geek, a hacker, a Federal Agent, or a corporate security executive? Would you be able to tell from my on-line activities here on Slashdot?

Would you say that an organization that has been successfully infiltrated by such a person provides "good" or "bad" information? What if I'm normally totally 3l33t, always provide top quality info, but today I get arrested and my company plays ball with the DoJ and begins subversive posting under my name? Or apply a classic man-in-the-middle attack. Does the value of the network go up or down? The value of my groups?

I don't mean to turn this into a discussion about authentication or crypto or anything like that, but in today's environment the chances are good that a non-trustworthy member would have little problem turning any random group into an ineffective cesspool of backbiting and endless discussions. (Perhaps by posting questions such as these?) I don't see the value of the network going up in cases like that.

Information value

[gazbo]

Reed's Law, which states that, for a network where members of the network can form groups within the network, the value of that network will grow exponentially....web logs are proof of this

This is shit. Utter shit. Not just the web log link, but the law - think about it. Imagine 1 person joining Slashdot. According to this law, he will make more difference to the value of the site than any person before him. This also applies to nodes in a network, clearly.

Anyone who isn't an idiot can see that rather than exponential, it is more accurately logarithmic, or at the very most sigmoidal. Anyone who disagrees with me, think about it. The claim is that the bigger a network is, the greater the impact of a single new node is. That's what an exponential function means.

Dumb. Dumb, wrong and idiotic.

Re:Information value

[sphealey]

Reed's Law, which states that, for a network where members of the network can form groups within the network, the value of that network will grow exponentially....web logs are proof of this

This is shit. Utter shit. Not just the web log link, but the law - think about it. Imagine 1 person joining Slashdot. According to this law, he will make more difference to the value of the site than any person before him. This also applies to nodes in a network, clearly.

I too would need to see some more concrete proof. Pretty much all recent research on business decision-making shows that a knowledgable person makes better decisions than a small committee, and a small committee makes MUCH better decisions than a large committee. My experience in work, volunteer organizations, and life in general bears this out.

The so-called network or weblog effects would seem to be nothing but committees expanded to the size of the on-line population. Which would also tend to imply that the quality of decisions reached by such methods would be mediocre at best.

sPh

Re:Information value

[blair1q]

I'd change it to "sigmoidal, or at the very most logarithmic", just to respect the asymptote, but otherwise, you're right and Reed's wrong.

Re:Information value

[Ed Avis]

I think the 'law' has something to do with the number of groups that can be formed, in other words the number of subsets a set contains (which does double with each additional element). It's the stuff about 'the value of that network' which is ignorant journo generalization.

Re:Information value

[Christopher Whitt]

The way I see it is that the network allows (motivated and skilled) individuals to become better-informed more quickly than ever before. So in that sense it has a positive effect, not a negative one.

The same reasoning can be extended to small committees and even large ones. Given the right conditions (good organization and internal discipline) committees can communicate amongst themselves better, as well as receive external input and do better, faster research.

On the other hand, I think the rules quoted by the parent poster certainly stretch the application of math to empirical observations of network effect more than a little too far. A superfically plausible rule of thumb and an actual verifiable mathematical relationship between number of users and the usefulness of a network are two very different things.

Christopher

Re:Information value

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if it's exponential, but I do know that Reed's Law does not apply when one person joins /. That's more like Metcalf's Law: every node can reach every other node.

With weblogs, it's different: out of all the weblog publishers, each user selects his own subset from which he pulls information. If /. had transitive trust ratings, each user setting his own trust level for other users, then Reed's Law would apply.

Re:Information value

[Ichoran]

Possibly...but the description was hopelessly bungled the first time around. For instance, the scaling was called "exponential" and then stated to be N^N, which is superexponential. (N^N=e^(N ln N).)

In any case, simply observing that there are 2^N possible groups doesn't mean that any significant fraction of them come into being. It's the number that actually come into being that are important, and those are limited by how much time people have and human social dynamics.

Re:Information value

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

I think you've got it. If Moore had said the value of processors doubles every 18 months (which is probably how a lot of dotcoms interpreted him) it would be just as ridiculous.

Re:I want to Mob You!

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that do not know, FTSO is a Berkley group that coordinates activist events. The Original Wi-Fighters!

Good job!

[archetypeone]

He confides in you and you tell the /. kru!

Oh well at least nobody has publicly come out and said that Santa isn't real.

Value of networks...

[monadicIO]

How is "value of network" defined in all those laws? Surely can't be monetary or even necessarily related to productivity. Perhaps cultural, but how do you compute an "exponential growth in a cultural value"?

Re:Value of networks...

[jaredcoleman]

Excellent question... try here, which says that Reed's law is measured in utility. Utility is then defined to be "a measure of the satisfaction gained from the consumption of a good or service."

You could measure the feedback of people using the network over time. Something like Osgood's symantec differential would standardize the responses. Just one idea, I'd be interested to see what others come up with.

Re:Value of networks...

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, these laws are somewhat in the nature of "rules of thumb". They're somewhat idealized & simplified, of course.

The point of them, though, is that the value of the network, HOWEVER you choose to define it (economically, culturally, socially, metaphysically, whatever . . . ), grows in the proportions suggested by these laws.

For Reed's Law, for instance, you might more properly say "the value of the network grows in proportion to the number of nodes raised to the power of the number of nodes".

This isn't saying anything about how much the network is worth, but rather, how much one network is worth in comparison to another network of different size.

For instance, a network that connects two people might have value of $0.0000000000000000001. Then by Reed's Law, a network connecting 1000 people has value $0.0000000000001. And (again by Reed's Law) a network connecting 6 billion people has a value of 36 cents.

Wo-wee! I just proved *scientifically* that maximum possible theoretical worth of the internet is 36 cents. Quick, somebody hand me my No-bel Prize!

Seriously . . . the point of these laws is the theoretical **relative** worth of networks with greater or fewer interconnections.

They arrive at these laws by starting with the assumption that the value of the network is proportional to the number of possible connections it can make (this is where you're getting hung up). But it's a pretty reasonable assumption, because the reason people get on a network is to make connections.

But you're going to say, theoretically there a trillions of possible connections on the internet, but even interconnecting continually at the maximum possible rate I could never actually make use of more than a few million of them! So all the rest must be worthless . . .

Well, this is kind of like the phone system--theoretically I can call billions of people, but in reality I mostly just use it to call my girlfriend. So that one connection is valuable and the other 999,999,999 are, practically for me, worthless.

But what happens when I get a new girlfriend? On a vastly interconnected phone network, the new girlfriend is likely to be there, too. Whereas on a small, piddly network she's not likely to be there. So you have to judge the utility of a network not just on the actual usage, but potential usage. When I need to make a new connection to someone, is that someone likely to be on the network, or not?

With this underlying assumption, it makes pretty good sense to say that the value of the network is proportional to the number of interconnections it can make (note, again, that key word, proportional).

So, starting with this assumption, they then analyze how many possible interconnections are created by the network. The math to work it all out is quite simple. (If you have a group of people, and each person can have a conversation with any other single person, then how many different 2-person "liasons" are possible? When you work this out, you come up with Reed's law . . . well, not Reed's Law, but something proportional to Reed's Law, which for our purposes is the same thing . . . )

How much actual value any particular connection has (or whether it has any real value at all) is, I suppose, up to those who are on the network . . .

--Brent Hugh

Music of the Human Genome on Mp3.com

Re:Value of networks...

[dcobbler]

Maybe here is a practical example of the wikipedia definition.

I bought a used iMac for my family. I put more memory in it so it runs just fine but it has a 6gb hdd. That's a problem because their mp3s and pictures fill up that drive fast. So, I networked my old ppro with a series of hand-me-down scsi drives (that total 10gb) to handle some of the data. That keeps the iMac drive from filling-up so fast. The 'value' to me is that I can use existing hardware to , basically, keep each other relevant and useful for my family.

Maybe one could say: "the value of the network is what you get out of it" (if that isn't too trite).

Dcobbler.

I am also reading this book.

[Diver777]

I happen to be reading this book right now and I find much of the information it presents very interesting. Some of the more interesting and exciting topics include wearable computing, and always on Inet connections, and what the meshing of those two ideas could mean. Check out this link here for info on one such program, the MIThril wearable computing project. Some very cool stuff coming out of MIT.

Re:I am also reading this book.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some other links that I found interesting relating to the wearable computing section of the book include Steve Mann's wearcam site, Thad Starner's info at Georgia Tech, and Melanie McGee's site.

Misleading title..

[grub]

"Smart Mobs"??

I was expecting a story about Tony Soprano getting his PhD in Molecular Biology or the like.

I want a refund.

Re:Give me a break

[jaredcoleman]

just a f@#$ing wireless network!

Yeah, and the computer was just going to help businesses save a little money. What person would want one!

Ratings

[orangeguru]

If the book is as shallow as the review I am not gonna buy it.

This review was just a string of the usual cyberspeak when it comes to wifi and online communities. Where is the beef?!

orangeguru

Re:Ratings

[Howard Rheingold]

You can read my own summaries of the book and the chapters within it easily enough, and an ongoing blog about Smart Mobs if you don't like the review. You can also read other reviews and articles about the book

Re:Ratings

[orangeguru]

Excellent! Why didn't the review mention the weblog?! ...

Bugger.

orangeguru

How predictable is this, actually?

[Badgerman]

I definitely agree that there's something going on with Smart Mobs, networks, etc. Communications are advancing at an amazing rate (despite plenty of stupidities), and I'm sure they'll only get more interlinked and complex.

However I do wonder just how much we can predict. As these systems get more complex and include more factors, what can we actually say and predict about them beyond some basics and metaphors?

I recall Vernor Vinge's idea of Singularity, the creation of greater-than human intelligence. Maybe we're witnessing a hint of that as people connect to machines and each others like neurons in the brain. However, the irony is that we may not be smart enough to know if something like that is happening.

This sounds like a great book and an interesting phenomena, and I plan to buy it. But I wonder how much we can say about this phenomena.

A serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus tapdancing Christ - does anyone really find this sort of book interesting? Yes, having free access to all sounds great, but in the end everyone knows it won't happen. You might as well write a book about world peace, or Europeans being able to launch rockets that don't explode as write about free access to information to all.

Re:I want to Mob You!

[Anonymous Coward]

What, exactly, are you talking about?

"Word them up on the level"? AFAIK 'word' is not a verb, but your sentence is constructed in such a way as to imply that the word 'word' is a verb.

Could you kindly elaborate?

Wireless comms has already changed our lives

[ites]

Living in Europe it is clear that GSMs have already changed our lives and societies. It's not quite clear how, but with 70% of the population (pensioners to babies) having mobile phones and using them heavily, the dynamics of social contact have definitely changed.
I'd agree that we are on the verge of a revolution similar to that in 1992-95 with the PC and Internet. Never before have so many people had such easy access to communications. And since human society is essentially about communications, this makes for extremely interesting times.
But I think many sociologists make the mistake of thinking that technology can change us in some way. It changes the way we behave, but it just reinforces the way we are. People stick with family and friends above all, and do not just form mobs because it's possible. If anything, totally flexible mobile communications will reinforce existing social structures (like family) that are constantly under attack from modern urban life, rather than creating new social forms.
In Belgium, the SMS short-message service is extremely heavily used but mainly for saying 'honey, I'm almost home', playing trivial games, chatting with sex lines (actually robots or operators) and voting in TV contests. Smart mobs? Not really.

Re:Wireless comms has already changed our lives

[Anonymous Coward]

Wireless communication is currently changing our lives but I think it would be presumptuous to say that it's already done so. Someone pointed out in another comment that emergency plans are probably already in place to shut down wireless networks in the US in case of insurrection or armed revolting, but I think that our lives will only be changed when those plans are actively used to stop a revolt, riot, or protest. Then our lives will have been changed, but only in the same way that Nazi Germany was changed when Hitler came to power.

Re:Wireless comms has already changed our lives

[Howard Rheingold]

Perhaps you might find these links indicative of slightly more significant activities:

http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000439.html
h ttp://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000413.html#0004 13
http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000403.html# 0004 03
http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000383.html# 0003 83

Re:Wireless comms has already changed our lives

[ites]

Only an American could say that wireless comms have not changed our lives. Go to Europe, Asia, and Africa, look at how people communicate, and wireless is having a serious impact. For various reasons the US is _way_ behind here, with about 30% of people having a handset, against (e.g.) over 90% in South Korea.

Smart shoppers, smart thiefs, smart cops?

[Master_Flash]

Does being part of a group make you smarter? Possibly, though I would postulate that instead it make you more of an instrument of the group, therefore less likely to exercise free will. It is the exercise of free will in a thoughtful manner that makes individuals smart.

Re:Smart shoppers, smart thiefs, smart cops?

[meringuoid]

Does being part of a group make you smarter? Possibly, though I would postulate that instead it make you more of an instrument of the group, therefore less likely to exercise free will.

The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its least intelligent member divided by the number of people in the mob.

- Terry Pratchett, 'Maskerade'

Re:Smart shoppers, smart thiefs, smart cops?

[Bowie J. Poag]

The IQ of a mob is the IQ of the least intelligent person, divided by the amount of media coverage, multiplied by the size of the crowd.

Re:Smart shoppers, smart thiefs, smart cops?

[meringuoid]

The IQ of a mob is the IQ of the least intelligent person, divided by the amount of media coverage, multiplied by the size of the crowd.

Hang on, that can't be right. In that case, adding people to the mob would increase its IQ, which I very much doubt. Also, a mob that is entirely ignored by the media would be infinitely intelligent...

Re:Smart shoppers, smart thiefs, smart cops?

[Bowie J. Poag]

Damn you and your pagan "math"....

Its witchcraft! Witchcraft, I tell you! :)

Re:Give me a break

[meringuoid]

It's just a fucking wireless network! It's not gonna change society, there are no new paradigms".

It's just a fucking computer network! It's not gonna change society, there are no new paradigms.

It's just a fucking wireless with pictures! It's not gonna change society, there are no new paradigms.

It's just a fucking way to transmit voice over the telegraph! It's not gonna change society, there are no new paradigms.

It's just a fucking round piece of rock! It's not gonna change society, there are no new paradigms.

If I have to hear one more thing about The Well...

[Bowie J. Poag]

...I think i'm going to puke.

Look, i'm only going to say this once.

THE WELL WAS NEITHER UNIQUE, NOR THE FIRST TRUE "ONLINE COMMUNITY". They were no more "visionaries" than the people who frequented countless other large BBS'es that were common in the late 70's and early 80's. Its just that these people tend to be a little more vocal and persistant in their whining for some reason, somehow feeling that they deserve to be repeatedly acknowledged for their vastly overhyped, overrated, earth-shattering contribution to society. And even if they actually HAD been the golly-gee pioneers they want desparately to be acknowledged as, guess what --- there were still communities before them. So get over it. Im sure they're nice people and all, but, sorry gang....there wasn't anything unique, profound, or ground-breaking about The Well. Period.

Cheers,

What kind of value

[howlinmonkey]

Before everyone gets on their soapbox about the value of nodes/individuals to a network, let's find out what Reed means by value.
A quick Google give us this http://www.reed.com/Papers/GFN/reedslaw.html article. He defines value as

"the value of potential connectivity for transactions. That is, for any particular access point (user), what is the number of different access points (users) that can be connected or reached for a transaction when the need arises."

Using his definition of "value", it is possible to defend his position. Additional nodes on a network can increase the overall connectivity value of the network.That does not necessarily make the network more valuable in an informational, social or monetary sense to any individual inside or outside of the group.

Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots

[StefanJ]

Forget the talk about ____'s Law and the "value" ofa network. Instead ask: Are smart mobs a GOOD thing, socially and politically?

Are we talking about a new and unique form of human organization that can actually solve problems? Or will they just be a new form of easily-manipulated ideological sounding board, like Talk Radio, that ends up braking a lot of windows, besieging office buildings, and hassling people on a hit list drawn up by a clever organizer?

I've heard anecdotal evidence that the angry protests that led to the bloody "Miss World" riots in Nigeria were coordinated by cell phones and text messaging. If this is true, we may long for the day of Dumb Mobs.

Stefan

Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots

[Badgerman]

I've heard anecdotal evidence that the angry protests that led to the bloody "Miss World" riots in Nigeria were coordinated by cell phones and text messaging. If this is true, we may long for the day of Dumb Mobs.

Though the Smart Mob theory is interesting, it may be that the Mob may use the "Smart" part to do some very stupid things.

I also wonder - will we see battling Mobs? Will the creation of one Smart Mob spawn others as countermeasures? Or will the speed of response make things far more integrated?

Of course in the end, it's what we (in general) do with technology.

Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots

[meringuoid]

I've heard anecdotal evidence that the angry protests that led to the bloody "Miss World" riots in Nigeria were coordinated by cell phones and text messaging. If this is true, we may long for the day of Dumb Mobs.

A little over two years ago, the near-total penetration of mobile phones allowed a mob consisting of a small number of truckers and farmers to bring the UK almost to a standstill - they were able to coordinate blockades of oil refineries and depots all over the country, and organise go-slow convoys on the major motorways. If each group of protestors had needed to have access to a landline phone to communicate, things would have been far more difficult.

I gather rival football hooligans have actually been known to contact each other by mobile before the match to arrange fights. Mad.

Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots

[k3v0]

Good is a silly word to use, it is objective. I think we should look at this as possibilities and how the juggernaut of tech will change the landscape. It doesn't matter wheter smart mobs are good or bad, just as it doesn't matter wheter or not cloning is bad: they both exist and can be described and utilized

Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots

[blamanj]

Mobs don't need no steenkin cell phones. When the Tutsi genocide took place in Rwanda, the calls to go out and kill came over the radio.

Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots

[Animats]

A little over two years ago, the near-total penetration of mobile phones allowed a mob consisting of a small number of truckers and farmers to bring the UK almost to a standstill. If each group of protestors had needed to have access to a landline phone to communicate, things would have been far more difficult.

US truckers did that 20 years ago with CB radios.

Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots

[Howard Rheingold]

The printing press enabled self-governing nations, the institution of science, better-organized warfare. The Bible and Mein Kampf reached far larger populations than they could have reached otherwise.

Was the printing press a good thing or a bad thing? Or does the moral value lie in human agency?

Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots

[dcobbler]

This reminds me of one of my favourite hobby horses...

...That there are lots of examples in the history of technology to tell us a little bit about what the effects of our current (new) technology might be. In fact, maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise that something like the Miss World pageant is both repulsive to certain cultural groups and is a good opportunity for somebody to engage in some local political muscle-flexing.

I would hope that somebody learned a lesson from that fiasco. Perhaps a similar lesson to the one that the Catholic church might have learned when Martin Luther figured out how he could use the power of printed caricatures to break their monopoly.

Cheers,
Dcobbler

Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots

[StefanJ]

Let me put it another way:

While I'm not a McLuhanite, I think that there is a kernel of truth in the notion that the medium is the message.

The fact that Mein Kampf is a book, a persistent object, makes it not only more readily available, but easier to critique and rebuff. Hitler's radio broadcasts, on the other hand . . . they planted their seeds of nationalism and hatred and wafted off into the ether. It was harder to pin them down, analyze them on the fly, critique them after the fact.

So: What kind of message does the form of wireless-gadget communication lend itself to? How does the audiance engage with these messages? What kind of accountability or possibility of critique is there?

Stefan

Am I the only one?

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

The intro speaks of MUDs, and the title of the book is "Smart Mobs". So I immediately thought, hey, this key wrote a book about creating intelligent mobiles in MUDs?

Re:Am I the only one?

[Dark Lord Seth]

I never really understood why MUDs are fun, they are too "limiting" because everything follows set rules and code, not allowing the flexibility of AD&D paper & pencil RPGs nor the eye-candy of graphical MUDs. Ah well...

As for online mobs, it's quite diverse. On my old MUD I've seen the biggest idiots grouping up with pedantic puppets to form a mob out of a pop of 500 which would be laughable were it not for admin support. And I've seen groups of 3 or 4 people dominating an entire 10+k forum community with sheer volume of posts and dry, though good British wit/humour. Those were the times. :)

Re:Am I the only one?

[swdunlop]

Lawd knows that's why I decided to read this one. I knew better, but I couldn't take the chance that it might actually be something new about MUDs that hasn't been warmed over and served up with Graphics for $9.95 a month.

Re:Am I the only one?

[swdunlop]

It actually comes down to the same concept of identity, personality and community on both your archetypical forum and mud. Users start with obscurity and anonymity, and either blaze their own path with new behavior and insights, spend their time toadying up to those who with charisma, or sit on the fence whining about how boring and silly it all is.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the exact same thing. That's the whole reason I started to read it, but it bored me fast. Hey, for a REALLY good MUD with a great (albeit small) player base, and kick ass IMMs, check out Adventured Unlimited, or you can just connect. =)

Thank you

[krog]

Thank you for calling the Well on their bullshit. It seems like every Well member has been gloating since 1995 that they tangibly shaped the future of society, computing, and human interaction (when in reality they were just BBS dorks like the rest of the world).

It's a big circle-jerk. The offenders in question, like most of their Man Francisco pals, would benefit from getting a good, solid ass-whupping.

Re:Thank you

[Bowie J. Poag]

Don't give them any ideas. Just plant dynamite in the fault lines and pray that the whole fucking reigon goes underwater.

Now theres a thought -- Maybe The Well can be the first underwater online community!

Listening to bozos from The Well claim they were the first online community is like saying Columbus discovered America. You're just plain wrong, and wrong in so many ways its not even funny.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

who WAS the first online community then ?
and is it still around ? and does it still have a lot of members ? and if it's the first, then why haven't they corrected the Well people or Howard on that claim ?

is it more important to be the first ? or the more successful ?

Re:Thank you

[Jus ad Bellum]

Forgive the literal answer to a retorical question.

I have a feeling that one of the old style BBS's (Bulliton Board Systems) would be an origional online community though none were that profound that I remember, of course I was in high school at the time and the only important things to me were Castle Wolfstien 3D, Commander Keen, and some other stuff.

Most likely there were even small forums and the basics of weblogs on the ARPANet though I would not know personally. I'm guessing that if there were such things on ARPA that I would still be mostly academic and military oriented.

In any case, the most successful is the one that matters.

(I cant spell)

Re:Thank you

[Bowie J. Poag]

Off the top of my head, Compuserve predates the Well by at *least* 10 years. See what I mean?

Smart Mobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever uses the words "smart" and "mob" in the same sentence must be either illiterate or not a very smart one.

Re:Smart Mobs?

[Howard Rheingold]

I didn't say they were wise mobs.

Website, too.

[swerdloff]

The book has a companion website, wherein Howard continues his active research into Smart Mobs and the integration of technology into daily life. Smart Mobs

I've gotten to page 53 of the book, which is dense, yet so information rich that I carry it with me everywhere, so I can try to squeeze out a few extra paragraphs on subway platforms and in elevators.

It's an excellent exploration of where mobile technology may lead.

VOIP = Number of wireless devices you've got...

[TyrranzzX]

[i]what's not to like about a new wireless Internet where the users are free to roam and create their own groups, spread their information, and share resources?[/i]

Say I baught 300 wireless routers and decided to start flooding UBB's and whatnot with BS...Fex, I could start a rumor that AMD's CPU's are crap or something of the sort. I could start one heck of a rumor using some wireless routers to mimic different IP stacks (Once IP ver 6 comes out, and if we had a wireless netwoek, I'd bet they'll drop in price 100-fold+) and a decent AI, plus some computing power.

This also brings up an interesting idea. 1 Guy (me, or someone else) can make one heck of as stink using machines. As AI intellegence increases and processer power increases, so too will their ability to stuff, it will no doubt get to the point of being a lifeform, and our majority-rule society will become extremly outdated. Just think, I build 10 robots and since I built them, I have some leverage over them, so I get 11 votes, while you only get 1...

So, in short, this is the communist version of the internet. Everyone is trusted to do their job, no more and no less. Not a good idea, considering that if the protocol isn't robust enough, someone can set their IP to their neighbors IP and crash all the routers on the entire block. It will take a feat of engineering to get everyone together on this. At least we have some regulation with large telco's running rampant.

Point in case, you've got packet loss...ping...noise...I'd think a fiber line would have much better quality and speed than a 100-mbps Wifi router, plus the routers would take forever to get between geographically distant points. In a suburban enviroment, you'd have mabye 600+ routers before you get to some geographically distant place, fex, between chicago and say, newyork, and it'd take 2-3 seconds to get their, and thats if the router has a broadcasting distance of 20-40 feet()plus the people who decided to get them nice 5-10 mile broadcasting routers). Not everyone is going to buy a 1-5 mile router, some are going to be cheap about it and buy a 30-foot wifi hub and leech off of their neighbors for access.

Great idea in consept, but you'll need to rework it into some solid standards with certain regulation and standardization agencies before it can really take off, much less be better than what we've currently got. And, it's got to monentarily beat the current standard.

Re:wow !

[NineBall]

(Insert humour here)

Interesting but hardly new.

[AJWM]

The classic work in this field is probably Starr Roxanne Hiltz's book Online Communities, published in 1984. While it tends to focus on the user community of the EIES conferencing system, it mentions some others (although my CoSy system -- aka BIX, CIX, and a few other installations, was too new to get much attention then), and the observations are as valid now about blogs and chat rooms as they were then about the command-line, text based technology of the time.

(The following quotes are from EIES users circa 1983 -- they make just as much sense if you s/EIES/Slashdot/ for example:

"I can't think when the system is down."

"I can live without EIES, but I can't LIVE without EIES."

"I find myself staying up late at night and getting up early in the morning just to use the damn thing.")

And it occurs to me, having read The Victorian Internet, that similar sentiments were probably expressed by telegraph operators back then.

Re:Interesting but hardly new.

[Howard Rheingold]

It seems that in your eagerness to display your knowledge you failed to read the actual review you are commenting on. Yes, Hiltz wrote a classic work in the field I wrote about ten years ago in a book that isn't the subject of this revie.? I doubt that Starr Roxanne Hiltz wrote about the social implications of mobile communications and pervasive computing!

Indeed Hiltz's book, and the work of her partner, Murray Turoff, is important, and of course I cited it in The Virtual Community. But again, that isn't the book under review here.

Re:Interesting but hardly new.

[Anonymous Coward]

The original poster made a few observations about electronic communities. That he/she didn't connect them to _mobile_ electronic communities doesn't matter that much, because the mobile aspect doesn't matter as much as you think it does.

In your book, you mention seeing kids in malls wandering around staring at their cell phones doing text messaging. If you go to a computer cluster on any campus and look at the kids doing online chat, they are acting the same way (glazed eyes, occasional snickers, changes in facial expression, etc) except they are sitting in one place.

Why does the fact that you can do this while walking change anything, other than increasing liklihood of accidents ?

Re:Interesting but hardly new.

[AJWM]

Mobile communications are nothing new either, not even mobile computer-mediated communication. Sure, it's a lot more convenient now than in the early 1980s where one lugged around something like a TI Silent700 terminal with built-in acoustic modem and hooked it up to a pay-phone (been there, done that, got the wierd looks), but it isn't new. There were a lot of us bixen whose weapon of choice when on the road was a Radio Shack Model 100 (with its built-in 4-line screen) with either its acoustic coupler or handy-dandy phone jack 'n alligator clips to hook into the motel's telephone system.

I must say you seem surprisingly defensive about a comment that in no way maligned your book, unless you have such a deep emotional investment in believing that you have come up with some new observation that you feel maligned. I haven't read your book, so perhaps you have -- although it seems to me that human sociological phenomena are based in no small part on the way humans are wired, so while there may be new expressions of sociological phenomena, I don't think there'll be new phenomena without a much more fundamental change in the human experience than "just" better communication and data access.

It is the wielder, not the tool

[paiute]

We should bear in mind whenever we are tempted to think that the next big thing - be it the telegraph, the telephone, intercontinental air travel, the internet, or whatever paradigm-buster de jure the media machine jams into our attention - will make us smarter/more compassionate/more productive/etc. that we are basically still cavemen. We may have wireless wearable computers, but we will as a whole use them the same way we used wooden clubs - to get women, food, and power.

Re:It is the wielder, not the tool

[ibi]

But you gotta admit the food and women, at least are getting better. (Those Neolithic gals? Yeech! :-)

Re:It is the wielder, not the tool

[duckyd]

The power, man, the power is getting better. Ever try to plug a sparc in inside a cave? Pain in the arse, I tell ya

My favorite smart MOB

[Dareth]

Powerstruggle Mud - King Willie.. Rastafarian Bounty hunter - pay him cash he go kill players in game for ya if he can... Wore a human skull on his head.. smoke some shit... bad dude.

I still remember the time he hit me with a skillet in the new hotel kitchen.. it still hurts!!

Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well

[Night Goat]

Right on, man. Right on.

Housing the cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

The value to the Internet is the "cloud". That is, all those machines out there forming the Net. The age old diagramming technique is to draw a cloud in the middle of the diagram, hanging users and servers off the sides of the cloud.

802.11 nodes do not give you access to the cloud. The cloud is built from landlines, and this isn't likely to change due to the level of investment put into the wires for the landlines that is where the bulk of the cloud changes.

To get from an 802.11 node to the cloud, you've got to interface to the landlines. Therefore, a gatekeeper is required somewhere along the way.

It's hard to imagine enough 802.11 deployment in the hands of individuals to create enough of an infrastructure to be interesting. That is, you'd have to build enough 802.11 to equal some interesting proportion of the bulk of the cloud (The Internet) at large.

- David

Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well

[Howard Rheingold]

Of course, if you actually read The Virtual Community (which has been on the Web since 1994), you will see that I did write a history of the first mailing groups on ARPAnet, the Usenet, BBSs, and all of the many virtual communities that preceded the WELL. The WELL was a good story, and you really can't get a publisher to put out a history of computer mediated communication without a good story. Certainly there are things to criticize about the book, but I would recommend critics to read the book first.

Re:wow !

[NineBall]

I am, aren't I?

Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well

[Toy G]

Fact is, The Well was full of writers and journalists and media-gurus-to-be.
From this POV, it was probably the first community recognized as such by the official culture establishment.

Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well

[Ed Avis]

I was eating my Whole Earth brand organic corn flakes this morning and wondering, how does this connect with the whole Jon Katz future of cyber-society thing? Maybe nothing, if you are right.

Smart Mobs == Flash Crowds ??

[dbateman]

The title of this book always makes me think of the Larry Niven concept of the flash crowd. He postulated if both communications and rapid transit existed (in his case teleportation), you'd get instant crowds around any geographic area when anything interesting was happening.

Has the author acknowledged Larry Niven??

Regards David

Re:Smart Mobs == Flash Crowds ??

[frozencesium]

flash crowd...um...you mean /.ing right? :-)

I think Larry Niven is one of those people that doesn't get as much attention. Those who know his work appriciate it. Not to downplay Howard Rheingold's work, but it is more mainstream I have found...again, not passig judegment on quality, just catigory...

-frozen

Re:Smart Mobs == Flash Crowds ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Its been noted before that Larry Niven's "flash crowd" concept is personified in the Slashdot Effect.

Re:Smart Mobs == Flash Crowds ??

[Devlin-du-GEnie]

Slashdotting is a flash riot. A whole mess a' people show up to see something interesting and *boom*. Granted that Niven's flash riots required teleportation, but the phenomenon is very, very similar.

karma happens between posts

Re:Smart Mobs == Flash Crowds ??

[dbateman]

Yeah you're probably right. It's only old fossils like me who even know who Larry Niven is. You have to also be a SF fossil as well :-)

Cheers
D.

Re:Smart Mobs == Flash Crowds ??

[dbateman]

Niven definitively implied that the IQ of a Mob was inversely proportional to its size. This then implies bad things about /., or at least those that take part in the effect named after it :-)

D.

A serious answer

[lpret]

It is analysing the sociological impact of technology. This is very important to all nerds, because regardless if a technology is good, if a society won't embrace it, it won't happen. Also, he looks at future technology and, through that same sociological spectre, tries to see what people will be interested in. Very interesting, intriguing, and ordered-off-of-amazon.com-as-we-speak work if I may say.

Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well

[Anonymous Coward]

The Well was neither the first, nor the last, online community. However, it was one of the first (if not the first) ones that included people from outside the little "computer culture" weenies, of which you obviously are a part.

Not many of the communities survived, and this combined with the sheer number of "important" people from the literary, advertising, legal and other non-geek professions made (and makes) it unique.

92%?

[sben]

You only gave this book a 92% rating? What a hypocrite. Your review made it sound like a solid 93%.

Corrected URLs

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000439.html
htt p://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000413.html#0004 13
http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000403.html# 0004 03
http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000383.html# 0003 83 [ Reply to This | Parent ]

loose lips..

[silicongodcom]

"He also confided in me that part of the reason he started writing about this stuff was so he could justify to his wife all the time he spent online. " and you go and post that for everyone to see? remind me not to tell you any of _my_ secrets ;)

Re:Give me a break

[realmolo]

You idiots aren't understanding. We've HAD networks for a long time. We know what they do, we use them for a lot of things. Simply going wireless isn't going to change things very much. A little. Not enough to write a whole book about the changes.

Discussion of the Book on the Well

[ibi]

There's a discussion with a number of interesting comments here.

they were unique and ground-breaking because....

[phippy]

...they *were* vocal about it. it's an online community, not a scientific discovery.

the main point that people make about The Well is that they *did* speak strongly, whiners or not...not whether they are the actual FIRST group to do it. they are still one of the largest and long-lasting online communities, with a history of "real-world" events that were spun from online discussion. moreso than any other. please correct me if you know of any other online community having more:

marriages, pregnancies, screenplays, books of fiction, business plans, political changes, etc.

no one has made any claims that the Well was an "earth-shattering contribution"...that's YOUR perception, because it has been written about a million times.

your comment might as well be about Coca-cola, and how ubiquitous it is, yet it wasn't the first soft drink of its kind. it may not be, but to date, it's been seen as the most sucessful.

Smart, huh?

[Merovign]

1. Given the historical behavior of mobs (generic term), I'm not so keen on upgrading them. More or less unavoidable, I guess, but anyone who's unpopular (or very popular) will have to hide much of the time - anyone who sees you can "call for backup" to anyone else who doesn't (or does) like you... and 300 people are known to do crazy things that 3 people would never try.

2. There are a lot of good things about this as well. If there are enough social impediments to people "mobbing" too much, then the good things (emergency communications, realtime local news, local problem-solving) could become a real boon for a lot of people, with the added benefit of solving simple, local problems (from traffic jams to minor flooding, etc) without 43 layers of bureaucrats. Think of realtime volunteer community work, or for that matter realtime local volunteer entertainment.

3. Some kind of "reputation system" would be cool for that kind of thing. i.e. "John Thomas," a totally unknown person says a bomb went off in the capitol, so you ignore it because the source isn't reliable. "Joe Cool," a well-known and reliable source, says there's an accident on highway 50 blocking traffic so you take the next exit.

4. So, bad, good, indifferent. Don't know how it will turn out. Will probably have one, may never turn it on.

Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well

[ivanski]

The WELL might not be as important or unique as it once was, and it may be true that it gets more press than it deserves, and it is true that at times it may be insular and navel-gazingly self-contratulatory, but to dismissively lump it in as one more BBS is completely unfair and even deeply ignorant.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation was organized and founded at the WELL. The annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conferences were started and are still ran at the WELL. Wired Magazine was partially organized on the WELL. The infamous and frauduluent cyberporn Time cover story that made passage of the CDA a foregone conclusion was systematically demolished and exposed and opposition organized at the WELL. And these are just the most salient examples.

Speak for yourself!!

[Newer Guy]

I know that my joining Slashdot made more difference to its value then any person before me. ;-)

Middlemen with money pay to stay in the middle!

[MS_leases_my_soul]

Wireless networks are cool and all, but the minute they are a threat to the economic models in place today, the existing middlemen will try to kill them. They will go to the government and use those millions to buy the support of government officials who will make the "offensive" technology illegal. That's life.

So, yeah, it might change your life, but only as long as the fat cats get fatter at the same time.

If people started building their own public wireless backbones and created a big global ISP that was free to everyone, you can bet your bottom dollar that the members of congress who get the most donations from the fat cats would suddenly be screaming about how terrorists could use this network to detonate a dirty bomb in grandma's backyard.

Oh, that kind of mobs...

[Quixadhal]

Am I the only person here who read "smart mobs" and expected an article on artificial intelligence as used in computer game NPC's?

Probably.

Given the talk in the summary about MUDs...

[raehl]

I thought it was a book about smart MOBileS. You know, have a conversation with the dragon before you slay it, that sorta thing.

You're wrong

[cosmosis]

Reeds Law is very true. All networks are proof of this. A single phone line was absolutely worthless, but as thousands and then millions of phone lines were added to the network, each individual phone line become that much more valuable. The same holds true of for fax machines, internet connections and smart mobs.

Planet P Weblog - Liberty with Technology.

Re:You're wrong

[gazbo]

Congratulations. You've illustrated that as nodes are added a network becomes more valuable. What I am criticising is the order of the function governing value.

I suggested maybe ln(n) or the sigmoidal function 1/(1+e**-n). Hell, your argument implies a linear relationship, which is still a far cry from exponential. Yeah, the more people on the telephone network the better. But, if some person only now gets a telephone, you are saying that the network for the rest of us will have an increase in value greater than ever seen before.

Nay, nay and thrice nay.

Re:You're wrong

[miu]

Reeds Law is very true. All networks are proof of this. A single phone line was absolutely worthless, but as thousands and then millions of phone lines were added to the network, each individual phone line become that much more valuable. The same holds true of for fax machines, internet connections and smart mobs

The phone network is a good example of why increasing the size of a network can reduce the value of nodes and network. eg: The US switch to 10 digits. Need another? The ridiculous UK numbering system, only new numbers need additional digits. Both schemes damage existing subscribers by adding complexity and the need for more intelligence in management systems.

Complexity in networks is to management software what heat is to electrical engineers. This is also why Apple and MS networks fail when they reach a certain size (determined by the amount of forethought dedicated to network growth).

Political conflict between open and closed systems

[Howard Rheingold]

One theme running through the book is that disruptive technologies such as new wireless technologies that use the spectrum in new ways, peer to peer methodologies, mesh networking, and other tools and methods near and dear to Slashdotters are the site of political battles such as the Hollings Bill and Berman bill.

Are the technologically sophisticated -- such as those who read and post here -- going to attempt to influence the outcome? Because the MPAA, the RIAA, Microsoft, Time-Warner-AOL are actively lobbying regulators and legislators.

I've tried to make the stakes and the nature of these conflicts clear to people who might be interested in political change and don't know technology developments. What I wonder is how many people who understand the potential of emerging technologies are willing to engage in the political battles over control of these technologies.

I've paid my contributions to The EFF and I've submitted my public comments to the FCC and I urge other Slashdot readers to do so as well.

Information Arms Race

[cryptolitho]

If the sum of knowledge is available in a smart mob, then this knowledge is also available to any hostile individual that taps into the mob network. The information's quality is only as good as its most trustworthy member.

This is precisely correct, and you should read the book to find out more. Open reputation mechanisms in such networks (Slashdot being a prime example) help to ensure the trustworthiness of the network and its individual nodes. One must accept as given that hostile forces are looking in and, in true Internet fashion, adapt or route around the intrusion.

As Rheingold states, there is a continuous competition or arms race between the development of privacy mechanisms in these technologies and technologies to counter that privacy. It is very similar to the war between those who want information to be free and those who want to charge money for it.

I'm almost finished Smart Mobs find it a most excellent compendium of the effect that communications technologies are having on our culture. I recommend it to all.

Information theory

[VoidEngineer]

Be careful about rants like that. They tend to reflect poorly on the poster, due to a need to resort to vulgar language, rather than being able to articulate clear arguments.

Some Debate:

Point 1: Having thought about it, I'm not all that excited about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, or the Law of Gravity. But I don't have much choice in the matter. I could rant and rage against how unjust the second law of thermodynamics is and call the whole law 'shit', but that isn't going to do any thing about the fact that energy will always flow from localized to diffused states. Reed's law is similar. I can't say that I exactly have a warm and fuzzy feeling about it, but I cannot deny its existance and truth.

Similarly, if you think about it, you will agree that the value of Slashdot increases with every new member (which is what the law states). The law does not state that a new member will make more difference to the value of the site than any prior person, as you suggest that it does. What it does state, is that a new member will provide a potential link to each other registered member of Slashdot, thereby increasing the factorial graph representation of N users by N+1.

Point 2: Clearly, if you've taken a college level calculus course, a group theory course, or a quantum theory course, you will know that logarithm is expressible in terms of multiplication, just as division is expressible in terms of multiplication, and subtraction in terms of addition. Logarithm and exponents are essentially the same thing. Now, I have thought about this topic, I have studied information theory and network theory, and have worked as a network engineer. The law is valid. The claim is not that "the bigger a network is, the greater the impact of a single new node is". You are confusing "big and great" with "numerous and potential". The more accurate claim is that the more numerous the network is, the more potential a single new node has to interact with other nodes.

Point 3: I hate to break it to you, but the fact of the matter is that not only is the law valid, it progresses at a rate faster than exponential. That is, Reed's Law is factorial, and is based on graph theory combinatorics. You appear to be trying to understand Reed's Law according to linear dynamics, which is why it doesn't make sense to you. Its a nonlinear function and requires modular mathematics, such as eigenfunctions and eigenvalues to properly calculate for a problem such as Slashdot. When you approach the problem of Slashdot with Reed's Law, eigenfunctions, and factorial combinatorics, it works out rather simply.

Case 4: This claim is similar to the prevailing 'wisdom' that a single vote doesn't matter in a large crowd. This unfortunate concept is, in large part, due to the popularity of statistics. As my old professor use to say in statistics class, 'Averages are for average people.' Moreover, every vote does count in an election, and every node does increase, factorially, in potential links to other nodes in a group. If one is able to keep track of factorially increasing links, then the whole problem can be tracked without resorting to using statistics.

Or maybe just twice nay?

[jhantin]

I think the reason the functions given are superlinear is that the small marginal improvement in value is being multiplied by the total number of nodes-- the value of the network as a whole, not the value to you of being on the network. Admittedly, this still doesn't account for that ridiculous N to the N law, let alone squaring...

In other words, if the value of a Yoyodyne Communicator to its user is proportional to the natural log of the number of people who have them, then the total value of all Yoyodyne Communicators is n ln n, which is asymptotically greater than linear. Result: each of us experiences a vanishingly small increase in value, but multiplied across the total number of users, the increase in value is greater than ever seen before.

Re:Or maybe just twice nay?

[plover]

Let me see if I understand you.

If one more user joins Slashdot, Slashdot might get statistically a tiny bit better. And that same user might also join Kuro5hin, User Friendly, a handful of blogs, and make them all tiny bits better also?

I just don't see the sum of all those tiny bits ever adding up to N^N. And at some point I believe these communities get too big, and fragment (AOL, Compuserve, and even Slashdot might be examples.) So does the network then benefit nine times by having one community split into three parts? That might be where these "exponential benefits" factor in.

I guess what sticks in my craw is that it's hard to imagine a single AOL disk ever improving the world in any way, shape or form. But I suppose for that Joe Sixpack and his family, the world just got a whole lot better. They simply have no idea how much better it could be.

NEWS FLASH!!!

[boog3r]

we have beaking news coming in... hold a sec...

HOLY SHIT! SANTA ISN'T REAL!

If I have to hear one more thing about Slashdot...

[cpeterso]

SLASHDOT WAS NEITHER UNIQUE, NOR THE FIRST TRUE "ONLINE COMMUNITY". They were no more "visionaries" than the people who frequented countless other large BBS'es that were common in the late 70's and early 80's. Its just that these people tend to be a little more vocal and persistant in their whining for some reason, somehow feeling that they deserve to be repeatedly acknowledged for their vastly overhyped, overrated, earth-shattering contribution to society. And even if they actually HAD been the golly-gee pioneers they want desparately to be acknowledged as, guess what --- there were still communities before them. So get over it. Im sure they're nice people and all, but, sorry gang....there wasn't anything unique, profound, or ground-breaking about Slashdot. Period.

Value function is applications, not architecture

[Jelloman]

You've hit directly on the critical flaw in all of these "Laws" - the "value" of a network is primarily a function of how the network is used, not its architecture.

The value function f(n) of a network, where n is the number of nodes, is determined by the application(s) built on that network. f(n) is certainly linear for most one-to-many broadcast networks; but to say it is exponential (or polynomial or sigmoidal or logarithmic) based only on the architecture is presumptuous.

Whether a given network architecture is end-to-end or broadcast, allows subgroups, etc., merely puts constraints on what kinds of applications can run over that network; but the value is determined by the applications, not the architecture.

Some non-architectural factors also contribute to the value function; consider two networks with identical architecture, one with ping times of 1 millisecond and the other with ping times of 1 month.

Nonetheless, the argument about the value of subgroups is important. (As an aside, the number of distinct unordered subgroups of a network with N nodes is not N^N, it is the sum of (N choose M) for all M=1..N, which turns out to be more than N^N for N>4, I think... just add up all the numbers on the N+1th row of Pascal's triangle.) But not all possible subgroups are interesting, and the real-world constraint on their "value" is again based on the application.

If one considers subgroups based on some kind of social relationships, I would suggest that the real-world multiplier of value here is the average number of subgroups that participants are comfortable with, and the number that the application can usefully manage. For example, some MMORPGs have various different chat channels for different kinds of social structures; but any given player is going to have a hard time differentiating chat from more than 2-4 channels/organizations, with the primary constraint there being usability of the chat UI. Once it becomes too confusing to figure out which chat goes with which organization, it all blurs together and the value is reduced to near the value of having one global channel.

Re:Value function is applications, not architectur

[Jelloman]

Sorry, the sum of (N choose M) for all M=1..N is never greater than N^N, because it is always 2^N.

So it is "exponential", just not N^N.

Here's a cool page about Pascal's triangle.

Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well

[Bowie J. Poag]

Hi Howard,

PCPursuit was a good story.
FIDONet was a good story.
BIX was a good story.
CompuServe is a good story.
QuantumLink is better story.
Brainstorm/XNET is an even better story.

The WELL isn't a story. There were hundreds (if not thousands) of WELL-like enclaves that had come and gone years before these guys even flipped the power switch.

If you have a responsibility as an author to be honest to the story. The world doesn't need yet another person latching onto a piece of horseshit and perpetuating it as if it were fact. Wise up.

I'll use the same analogy I pointed out earlier... Who discovered America, Mr. Rheingold? By propping up The WELL as some sort of miracle happening, you're doing the literary equivalent of responding with "Well, Columbus, obviously"...

I would have more respect for you if you were to point out the equivalent of "The Americas have been continually inhabited by humans for at least the past 15,000 years. That, and archaeological evidence suggests that Norse explorers had arrived in North America and begun colonizing the reigon a full 800 years before Columbus."

See, *thats* an interesting story, Mr. Rheingold.

Cheers,

Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well

[Bowie J. Poag]

Fact is, The Well was full of writers and journalists and media-gurus-to-be.

So was Compuserve in 1975. A full decade before The WELL was even created.

Cheers,

Re:they were unique and ground-breaking because...

[Bowie J. Poag]

please correct me if you know of any other online community having more:

marriages, pregnancies, screenplays, books of fiction, business plans, political changes, etc

I'll give you two. Compuserve and FIDOnet. Here's a link to Google to get you started. Have fun.

Cheers,

Re:they were unique and ground-breaking because...

[phippy]

cool! thanks for that link to google. you're so clever, telling me to have fun and all that.

anyway, i'm not sure either of us can find the stats on what online community has more of those things, so i guess you got me there. if i'm wrong about that, and you *do* have those stats, please send 'em on.

again, my original point was that no one claims it was either unique, or the first. not in any book that i've read about it. and believe me, i'd know. i used to work there.

so where did you read that The Well *does* claim to be the first ? or unique ? it's not in Howard's book. as before, i could be wrong and there is a claim somewhere of this. if there is, let me know.

Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well

[phippy]

yeah, we got it. it wasn't the first. who is saying it was ?

Rubbish!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that the parent post may look insightful, but the moderators have been led astray. The poster doesn't know what he's talking about, or is a troll. Probably both.

"Reed's Law," if it was quoted correctly in the review, *does* indeed imply that each new user adds more value to the network than any previous user did. More than that, each user would multiply its value by a factor larger than that by which any previous user had! If the value is N^N, then each additional user multiplies the value by (N+1) * ((N+1)/N)^N, which is about (N+1)*e for large N. If adding the millionth user makes a network a few million times more valuable than it was before, then you have a poor definition of value.

Group theory and quantum theory are not relevant here. If the poster had enough of a mathematics background to understand either of those topics, though, then he would not have misunderstood N^N.

"Graph theory combinatorics" is not a term anyone working in graph theory or combinatorics would use, and if they did, they would not elevate this trivial problem by claiming that they are relevant anyway.

Linear dynamics is not relevant, and probably nobody thought it was.

Eigenfunctions and eigenvalues are not relevant here.

Whatever you think "modular mathematics" is, it's not relevant either.

Much of the rest of what the parent's poster said doesn't make any sense. I think it's clear that he's full of shit.

Reed's law is indeed rubbish. Where would anyone get N^N anyway? Someone could be forgiven for thinking that every possible subset of users adds some minimum value to the network, and they'd get 2^N. That would be a dubious proposition of itself. But N^N is ridiculous.

Re:Rubbish!

[VoidEngineer]

I'm sure that the parent post may look insightful, but the moderators have been led astray. The poster doesn't know what he's talking about, or is a troll. Probably both.
Thank you for your comments Anonymous Coward. I have had professors and mathematicians at the University of Chicago and Notre Dame look at my mathematics before, and although I cannot claim to be a mathematician, they have certainly agreed that I know something about which I talk about.

If the value is N^N, then each additional user multiplies the value by (N+1) * ((N+1)/N)^N, which is about (N+1)*e for large N. If adding the millionth user makes a network a few million times more valuable than it was before, then you have a poor definition of value.

I'm not exactly sure when or where N^N was introducted to this line of discussion. I was refering to N! which, although related to N^{nth power}, actually increases faster than N^{nth). Perhaps I am wrong. The fact of the matter is that it increases quickly, and it accelerates as it increases.

Group theory and quantum theory are not relevant here. If the poster had enough of a mathematics background to understand either of those topics, though, then he would not have misunderstood N^N.

Well, Anonymous Coward, I would suggest reading some texts including Cisco's Internetworking Technologies Handbook and Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. While you are at it, you may want to check out some stuff on Quantum Graph Theory.

"Graph theory combinatorics" is not a term anyone working in graph theory or combinatorics would use, and if they did, they would not elevate this trivial problem by claiming that they are relevant anyway.

Except for the 56,000 people who are recorded by google as having used those three words together in a webpage. Oh, wait, here is a conference on it, and here is a plug-in for mathematica. Oh, wait, they teach classes and hold conferences and seminars on group theory and combinatorics. (Have you ever hear of adjectives?) And more over, these are the basic mathematics used to discuss world problems, such as poverty, hunger, disease, and war.

Linear dynamics is not relevant, and probably nobody thought it was.

Except for the person who said that the problem was exponential or logarithmic.

Eigenfunctions and eigenvalues are not relevant here.

It appears to me that you don't know how to use eigenfunctions and eigenvalues to calculate quantum graphs, or to solve real world problems in quantum computing, fiber optics, network routing, group addressing, domain name spacing, etc. etc. etc. I suppose that it never occured to you that quantum graph, or a network graph, such as is described by Reed's Law could be described by a matrix or an eigenvalue, did you?

Whatever you think "modular mathematics" is, it's not relevant either.

You know what. I'm just not going to be drawn into this argument.

Much of the rest of what the parent's poster said doesn't make any sense. I think it's clear that he's full of shit.

Excellent strategy! When confronted with something you don't understand, resort to the use of vulgarities! Full of shit I am! It's a biological phenomena which results from eating food. I'm also full of water, proteins, amino acids, calcium deposits, muscle masses, and nucleic acids. But I try to be polite, and I try not to curse.

Reed's law is indeed rubbish. Where would anyone get N^N anyway? Someone could be forgiven for thinking that every possible subset of users adds some minimum value to the network, and they'd get 2^N. That would be a dubious proposition of itself. But N^N is ridiculous

Agreed! N^N is rubbish! I don't know where you got that expression. If you observe my posting, nowhere did I use the expression 'N^N'. Perhaps you were attempting to raise 'N' by 'N+1' or something. I'm not sure. I was attempting to express a concept which is typically refered to with the notation 'N!' although in my haste, I did not compose that message with that particular expression. Anyhow, I agree that N^N is rediculous. Why did you bring it up?

Re:Rubbish!

[ptimmons]

I'm not exactly sure when or where N^N was introducted to this line of discussion. I was refering to N! which, although related to N^{nth power}, actually increases faster than N^{nth). Perhaps I am wrong.

Yep, I think so. It's 4:30am here, so I may be a bit fuzzy-headed... but I think N^N increases MUCH faster than N!
1! = 1, 1^1 = 1
2! = 2, 2^2 = 4
3! = 6, 3^3 = 27
4! = 24, 4^4 = 256... etc.

In fact, N^N >>> N!

Re:Rubbish!

[VoidEngineer]

Fine. I agree that N^N increases faster than N!

Now then, let us apply some N^N math here:

1 | (1^1) | A^A | AA

4 | (2^2) | AA, AB, BA, BB | 4

(Note: we've already encountered an instance where persons are paired with themselves, and where links have been duplicated (perhaps describing communication links of people talking to themselves and shouting at each other, as opposed to talking with each other.)

3 | 3^3 | A, B, C | AAA, AAB, AAC, ABA, ABC, ABC, ACA, ACB, ACC, BAA, BAB, BAC, BBA, BBB, BBC, BCA, BCB, BCC, CAA, CAB, CAC, CBA, CBB, CBC, CCA, CCB, CCC | 27

I especially like how the model is already beginning to show signs of (x | AAA, BBB, CCC). Also, it looks like there is a lot of replication, as in (AB | AAB, ABA, BAA, BBA, BAB, ABB). Actually, this is getting close to some population genetics work I've seen done.

The problem is that N^N still isn't the correct model for the phenomena.

Re:Rubbish!

[Anonymous Coward]

d00d. how can anyone accept anything else you've said after a smack down such as getting N^N vs N! wrong?

Re:Rubbish!

[VoidEngineer]

d00d. how can anyone accept anything else you've said after a smack down such as getting N^N vs N! wrong?

Perhaps they can't. Although I hope that I never post something such as 'd00d'. Moreover, I happen to be able to learn from my mistakes and am able to get back up after a smack down. Also, I'm not an Anonymous Coward and I keep track of my comments and mistakes. The end result is that I become more educated and wise with each mistake I make and 'smack down' which I receive. Trust me, I've been 'smacked down' more times than you have, and by better people than you.

As far as getting N^N vs N! wrong, I don't typically work in combinatorics or in factorials. I typically work with vector mathematics, such as eigenfunctions and matrices.

nice shoes

[zonker]

offtopic i know, but has anyone else seen rheingolds shoes? he is known for wearing funky shoes that he often paints himself. enjoy :)

Re:they were unique and ground-breaking because...

[Bowie J. Poag]

Here's a clue, Sherlock.

GEnie had close to 100,000 users by the time The WELL came into existance. Compuserve had close to a quarter of a million, having come into existance a full 15 years before The WELL. Lay off the hash and hop aboard the Clue Train (tm), hippy. Jesus Christ...

And Californians wonder why the rest of the country laughs at them..sheesh.

Well Informed but Morally Challenged Mobs?

[implex]

I think most are familiar with this concept. It is not the information or tool that is Evil(TM) but how it is used.

That thinking pervades all open source and online piracy issues.

That's my Half a Shekel for the day.

Re:they were unique and ground-breaking because...

[phippy]

1 - how much time do you put into making trippy background images, anyway ? hippy yourself.

2 - i'm from Boston.

3 - reading. it's fundamental. try it. i'll pose the question one more time. if you read it slow, then maybe you'll have a chance to understand it:

where do you see that The Well claims to be the first online community ? who are you arguing that with ?

p.s. even if i was a Californian, i'd be happy not to be from Arizona, with their "vortexes" and "ufo communities"

Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well

[Toy G]

Probably, the "wellers" are more rumorous ;)

Please shut up you stupid fag

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hate the way you talk, trying to sound clever and intelligent. It is clear to me that you are just a cock-sucker who is eagerly awaiting your next cock. I employ a small band of trolls, they are not many, but they are resourceful, and I have set them upon you. My trolls will track you down, and either kill you on the spot, or bring you to me. Although it is too late for you, perhaps other can learn from your mistakes.

Re:Please shut up you stupid fag

[VoidEngineer]

Suit yourself.

And I dare you to not use vulgarities while doing so. I bet you can't.

+4? Are the moderators mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... despite the fact that he's admitted he has no idea, this guy's post has still been moderated +4, Insightful. What a joke. Look at all the times he's tried to namedrop technical-sounding fields, as if he knows what he's talking about, despite being clueless about what N^N means.

That's slashdot for you.

Re:+4? Are the moderators mad?

[VoidEngineer]

When did I admit that I had 'no idea'? And when did I even bring up 'N^N'? Read the article again, and explain to me when I introduced 'N^N'.

Anonymous Coward introduced the term 'N^N' in the posting 'Rubbish!'. I think that this whole N^N thing may be off topic. It's like calculating a standard deviation, when the topic was discussing how to calculate an average. Kudos to other folks for being able to calculate N^N, and to point out that I was wrong in the fact that N^N increases faster than N!. My claim, however, was that N! increases faster than f(x^N) where x is a static number. That is, my claim was that factorial functions increase faster than exponential functions.

Part of the problem is that there are too many capital N's in this discussion. Let me differentiate the problem, and be more concise. Please substitute M! for N! from here on in this discussion.

Premise 1: Please select a static number, and refer to this number as 'x'.

Premise 2: The range of these functions is within the range of real numbers |R, and extends to infinity.

Premise 3: The method of incrementing M and N is in accordance to interger counting.

Claim 1: M! will increase at a slower rate than f(x^N) while M
if/for (m = 0; m < n; m++) RATE { m! < f(x^n) }

Claim 2: M! will increase at the same rate as (f(x^N) while M = N.
if/for (m = n; m = n; m++) RATE { m! = f(x^n) }

Claim 3: M! will increase at a faster rate than (f(x^N) while M > N.
if/for (m = n+1; m < infinity; m++) RATE { m! > f(x^n) }

Claim 4: Because the range of numbers extends to infinity, M! will eventually outpace the f(x^N), for any static number x.

Reread the article, and then go study thermodynamics, quantum theory, and nonlinear dynamics at the University of Chicago. You will then understand how these topics relate to networks and group theory. Remember that analysts describe stocks in the market as 'hot' or 'cold'. Moreover, Black and Scholes Options Pricing model is based on a modified thermodynamics model. And frankly, network routers with fiber optic backbones propogate information across the internet according to laws and formula derived from areas such as quantum group theory and network theory. They are, after all, using fiber optics, and optics is a domain of quantum field theory. Reeds Law is one such application of quantum networking and information theory.

I never brought up 'N^N'. Anonymous Coward did, and it was off topic.

Re:Give me a break

[vbock]

I think, maybe, reading the book might change your mind.

We had wired phones for a long time. Now most folks have mobile phones, and life as we know it has changed a lot in a lot of little ways--from being able to make calls to the family member at the grocery store to remember the paper towels to being able to report drunk drivers within seconds of detecting them.

We've had computer networks for a long time, but they were tethered to desks in offices. Now we can carry them with us, in our phones or our pda's or some combo device. What happens when you can send a message to everyone in your group from where ever you are? New stuff. Stuff we haven't seen before. Some good stuff, some not so good.

Rheingold's book does a nice job of outlining some of the threats and opportunities presented by this new confluence of technologies. "What happens when the network goes mobile?" is a pretty big question--one that Smart Mobs really only begins to answer, but does the noble service of getting the reader thinking about a host of new questions.

Re:+4? Are the moderators mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

When did I admit that I had 'no idea'? And when did I even bring up 'N^N'? Read the article again, and explain to me when I introduced 'N^N'.

*You* read the article again. It's mentioned in the definition of Reed's law. Although it's also described as "exponential," and N^N wouldn't usually be described that way.

That is, my claim was that factorial functions increase faster than exponential functions.

Here's the claim from your original post that we take issue with:

The law does not state that a new member will make more difference to the value of the site than any prior person

It does imply that. This is true for exponential functions c^N, c>1; and for N^N. You are wrong, wrong, wrong.

And stop trying to bring up quantum theory and other topics that aren't relevant. By misunderstanding simple formulae, you've proven to everyone that you are not smart enough to understand quantum theory to any depth, and we wouldn't be impressed even if you did.

Re:+4? Are the moderators mad?

[VoidEngineer]

Fair enough. I concede the argument.

Probably close

[oldstrat]

Check out Asimov's Foundation series of SciFi books.
The core of the story(s) comes down to the study of group behaviour over time, even including 'random' individuals affecting the total mass, by the character of Hari Seldon.

We may be at the computational edge of being able to this.