Science Fiction and Smart Mobs

Roland Piquepaille writes "Henry Jenkins is director of the Program in Comparative Media Studies at the MIT. In this article, he compares the new science fiction comic book from Warren Ellis, Global Frequency and the more serious book from Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs. 'It is almost as though Ellis was illustrating arguments that Howard Rheingold makes in his new book, Smart Mobs.' As Rheingold explains, 'Smart mobs consist of people who are able to act in concert even if they don't know each other. The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities.... Groups of people using these tools will gain new forms of social power.' Check this column for some excerpts or read the original article for more details. More information about topics discussed in Howard Rheingold's last book can be found at the Smart Mobs weblog." T. adds: Here's Curtis Frye's review of Smart Mobs .

Comments

Dumb Mobs

[Nooface]

For an alternative perspective on mob behavior, see this article in Wired.

Re:To marry Medusa...

[baywulf]

Yeah but I have found that whatever Theodore Sturgeon write always sounds fishy to me.

Larry Niven Covered This Years Ago

[Dr. Wu]

He wrote several short stories that dealt with the effects of technology on mobs. Although in his universe, it was teleportation that created the problem, it's certainly relevent with today's technology (just look at the /. effect)

I know that they are included in several collections, the titles are...

- Flash Crowd

- The Last Days Of The Permanent Floating Riot Club

Actually, some of his best writing is that which deals with the psychology of new technologies, such as teleportation. So I would highly recommend that those interested check his work out.

OSS and Smart Mobs?

[einhverfr]

Smart mobs consist of people who are able to act in concert even if they don't know each other. The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities....

Sounds a whole lot like how OSS projects are developed-- and we communicate and collaborate through devices with computing capabilities known usually as personal computers ;-)

Current Research

[Omegalomaniac]

There is currently a system available to anonymize web transactions . The legal implications of this are worth considering, with the current spat of court cases holding service providers responsible for the actions of their users.

Reed's Law is exponential

[civilizedINTENSITY]

From the bookreview:

• 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.

That would be N^N which is faster than exponential

http://www.epublicrelations.org/Reedlaw.html

Dr. David P. Reed, former vice president and chief scientist for Lotus Development Corporation, has developed the idea of Group Forming Networks to explain the enormous power of the internet to facilitate the formation of networked groups. These groups could include the numerous special interest groups, which are attacking the biotech industry. The Group Forming Law (or, Reed?s Law) calculates the number of groups of two or more people which can be formed a single group.

For example, how many groups of two or more people can be formed with an initial group of three? According to Reed?s Law is 2^N-N-1 Substituting 3 for N the answer is 4. Not a very impressive number. However, the answer grows dramatically as N grow. For example, how many groups of two or more people can be formed in a classroom of 20 students? The answer? 1,048,555!!!

More interesting statements @
http://www.epublicrelations.org/Reedlaw.html

Reed notes:

• "As the internet continues to expand, investments in Group-Forming Networks are likely to produce the biggest returns. As the scale increases, what important also shifts?When the Group-Forming Law takes hold, communities are king."

Also:

• "The obvious conclusion is that whoever forms the biggest, most robust communities will win."

These statements are surprisingly similar to those made by RAND in its discussion of netwars.

RAND notes:

• "Whoever masters the network form first and best will gain major advantages."
  
  

Also:

• "The information revolution favors and strengthens networks, while it erodes hierarchies."
  
  "Hierarchies have a difficult time fighting networks."
  
  "It takes networks to fight networks."
  

Finally, RAND states:

• "Today, those who want to defend against netwar will, increasingly, have to adopt weapons, strategies, and organization designs like those of their adversaries. This does not mean mirroring the adversary, but rather learning how to draw on the same design principles that he has already learned about the rise of network from in the information age. These principles depend to some extent upon technological breakthroughs, but mainly on a willingness to innovate organizationally."
  
  

Containing smart riots

[greenjinjo]

I remember reading about severe soccer related riots in Rotterdam in '99. The police had great trouble containing the riots because people were calling on their mobile phones detailing the position of the police agents.

I always wondered why they did not shut down the cellular antennas that day. There is probably a law that forbids the police to do that.

How can you control rioteers if they have this communications advantage?