Wireless phones with Internet capability are bringing people together, both in the cyber sense and literally, according to a cyberspace and digital culture guru.
Speaking at the University of Utah on Thursday, Howard Rheingold described how the combination of communication and computing in handheld devices has the capability to mobilize people — even complete strangers — into large groups he calls "smart mobs" or "flash mobs."
One example is a public demonstration in the Philippines organized through text messages encouraging people to congregate at a city square and wear black.
The "connected" technology on handheld devices represents "the way in which global media and the Internet are enabling people to organize and coordinate collective action with people they weren't able to organize before, on scales they weren't able to organize before and at a pace they weren't able to organize before," Rheingold said at the ninth annual Rocco C. and Marion S. Siciliano Forum.
That technology — with associated blogs, text messaging and instant messaging, photo-sharing and the like — will have cultural ramifications even stronger than those resulting from the beginnings of the printed word, he said.
"I want to emphasize that it's not the technology, and it's not the medium. It's the social practices, the things to do that people invent, given these powers, that makes the difference," he said. "But if you're going to compare the potential of the printing press, the potential of the wirelessly linked PC, I think it would be wise to assume that we will have social changes, for better or worse, in the coming decades, that are going to be more powerful than those unleashed by the printing press."
Rheingold sees current mobile Internet computing at the same point the PC was in 1980 and the Internet was in 1990. In future years, it will become more mobile, more pervasive and more powerful while also being less expensive.
That means the likelihood of more flash mobs, often organized to perform some act merely to demonstrate their ability to congregate in large numbers, will grow. It has shown it can get people together "at the same place and the same time, and they do something silly," he said. "Who knows what these people are going to be doing with their ability to self-organize entertainment in a few years?"
But, as with other technological innovations, there also will be an increased likelihood for trouble. Not all smart mobs are nonviolent. Not all will be democratic. Riots and car-bombings in France were coordinated through the Internet, and the Sept. 11 terrorists would not have been able to succeed without mobile phones and the Internet, he said.
"I believe that, just as with the automobile and the telephone and the alphabet, people with constructive ends in sight are going to create more freedom and more wealth, and they're going to help make life better, and people with destructive ends in mind are going to be able to do destructive things on scales that they weren't able to do before," Rheingold said.
Rheingold — whose presentation touched on huge volunteer efforts to tackle monster computing tasks, the effects of eBay's model on e-commerce, follow-you-anywhere tracking chips and other topics — encouraged people to learn more about technologies and their possible ramifications.
"I think in the past, populations have not thought critically about technologies, that the benefits are immediately available and the costs take a little bit of time to come out," he said. "So I certainly don't want to pretend to be an enthusiast for what's happening. I think, in fact, that the more we know about what's possible, for better or for worse, the more influence we might be able to have on the outcome."
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