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.
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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.