Imagine what the French Revolution would have been like with cell phones…
SmartMobs.com is the companion site for Howard Rheingold’s upcoming book, Smart Mobs.
What’s a Smart Mob? Imagine hundreds of Japanese teenage girls dispersed throughout Tokyo, all in near-instant contact with each other via wireless technology. When one of them spots their favorite teen idol (say, me, for example) browsing the latest anime at a newstand, she can message the others, allowing them to triangulate in on my position. Within minutes I’m surrounded by hundreds of my screaming teenage fans.
Okay, so that example got a little twisted, but you get the picture. That’s a smart mob — an emergent cooperative phenomena brought about by near-instant communication in the hands of dispersed, unrelated individuals. I’m eagerly awaiting Rheingold’s book.