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Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution: Transforming Cultures and Communities in the Age of Instant Access (review)
Abstract
Social Forces 83.4 (2005) 1765-1767
Howard Rheingold's latest book is not intended to be scholarly research so it is not entirely fair to assess it by strict academic standards. That being said, what then should sociologists take from this book? The book's greatest strength is that it focuses on digital technology, in particular the mobile Internet. This technology is increasingly relevant not to an elite few, but to people who use communication technology to maintain familial relationships, conduct business (both legal and illegal), and engage in paid labor, and, of course, to the academics who study such behaviors. Rheingold goes beyond the desktop computer and the mobile phone to render visible the digital technology of which non-technologists are usually not aware. If Rheingold's account of cultures and communities in the age of instant access reads like science fiction, it is in part because the reality of digital technology — what it can do — bears more than a passing resemblance to science fiction novels.
Smart Mobs provides an eight-chapter walking tour of what Rheingold enthusiastically calls "the most relevant social science observation on mobile telephone use" (24) on the levels of individual personality, immediate social network and neighborhood, and society. The introductory chapter introduces Rheingold's fascination with the interactions of physical space, people, and mobile phones. In the second chapter, Technologies of Cooperation, Rheingold attempts to put mobile phones in the context of a few theories of social groups informed by social network analysis, biology, psychology, and economics. In the third chapter, Rheingold provides clear explanations of technologies related to mobile phones like peer-to-peer computing, distributed processing, and grid computing. His fourth chapter focuses on sentient technologies, so called because of the embedded chips that can "sense, receive, store, and transmit information" (85), thus enabling scientists to link geography and information in novel ways.
The chapter that will interest a sociological audience is the fifth one, in which Rheingold claims that the "most profoundly transformative potential of connecting human social proclivities to the efficiency of information technology is the chance to do new things together, the potential for cooperating on scales and in ways never before possible" (114). He describes the import of reputation and its managers for digitally-based systems like eBay. In the sixth chapter, Rheingold reviews the implications, including policy, of the transition from wired to wireless technologies. In chapter seven, he provides a few concrete examples of what he would characterize as smart mobs, pointing to the 2001 presidential election in the Philippines, in which residents and activists relied heavily on text messages sent on their mobile phones to coordinate protests. In his eighth and final chapter, Rheingold discusses what he sees as the implication of the "always on" nature of the mobile Internet, focusing only, as technologists always do, on the specter of surveillance.
Smart Mobs' greatest strength, its focus on digital communication technology and social action, also turns out to be its greatest shortcoming. Sociologists who study community, social movements, participatory demography, cooperation, and perhaps even information and communication technologies (ICTs), will be frustrated by Rheingold's privileging of technology over the at least equally important contexts in which technologies exist. This problem is apparent in the very idea of a smart mob, the most sociologically intriguing aspect of the book, which is neither defined nor discussed in enough detail to satisfy a sociological audience. Rheingold characterizes smart mobs as "consisting of people who are able to act in concert even if they don't know each other . . . [they] cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities" (xii). Rheingold purposely intends the concept of a smart mob to be visionary and provocative, reminding readers that "smart mobs aren't a 'thing' that you can point to with one finger or describe with two words, any more than 'the Internet' was a 'thing' you could point to" (182).
However, for a sociologically informed audience, the discussion of new forms...
... Los recuentos posteriores de estas protestas reconsideraron ampliamente este tipo de reivindicaciones revolucionarias en torno al papel movilizador de la comunicación móvil. Rheingold fue particularmente criticado por su visión tecnocentrista que deja de lado aspectos socioculturales clave del contexto en el que se dieron las revueltas y se insertaron las tecnologías (Kotamraju 2005). Algunas descripciones más matizadas de las insurrecciones han resaltado el fetichismo tecnológico de la clase media filipina (Rafael 2003, pg. ...
... Recuentos posteriores han matizado este tipo de aproximaciones acerca del revolucionario papel movilizador de las telecomunicaciones. En particular, Rheingold ha sido criticado por el tecno-centrismo de su visión, que ignora importantes aspectos contex-tuales donde estas tecnologías están insertadas (Kotamraju, 2005). Un excelente esfuerzo por contextualizar el papel de la tecnología en la insurrección filipina es proporcionado por Rafael (2003) que, aún sin criticar directamente a Rheingold, analiza las limitaciones impuestas por las dinámicas de clase dentro del acontecimiento, y, en particular, el importante fetichismo tecnológico de la clase media filipina (Rafael, 2003: 412), que, según el autor, estaba más preocupada por conseguir reconocimiento por parte de las autoridades que en derrocar las estructuras autoritarias. ...
This paper aims at interpreting the relationship between social movements and communication technologies, from the perspective of a set of critical frameworks which, in recent years, have warned of the processes of sublimation and creation of myths linked to the birth of each " new " technology. Within this context, civic movements are observed both as spaces of reproduction of enthusiastic discourses on ICTs, at the service of diverse power spheres-corporations, governments, media, etc.-, as well as of experimentation and technological appropriation, in which, through daily practices, a more complex and demystified perspective of communication technologies is produced. We propose a chronological analysis across three case studies, based in different contexts, which aim at illustrating the premature approximations to the role of communication technologies in social uprisings: the Zapatista informational guerrilla, the 'smart mobs' in the Philippines, the 'Anomalous Wave' and the '5 Stars Movement' in the Italian context. We conclude underlining the need to move towards the collective construction of knowledge through synergies between academia and social movements as a way to question techno-euphoria as well as to avoid the mistakes of the past.
... However, Web 2.0 is not only a technological movement, it is also a social one. The most notable phenomena are social bookmarking (Albrycht, 2006), grassroots responsibility, citizen journalism (Gilmor, 2004), and the spontaneous emergence of smart mobs, informed groups of citizens, who use blogs and wikis (Dearstyne, 2007) for their campaigns (Rheingold, 2002; Trufelman, 2005). Hoegg et al. (2006) attempt to provide a comprehensive definition for these technological and social developments by defining the term Web 2.0 as ''the philosophy of mutually maximizing collective intelligence and added value for each participant by formalized and dynamic information sharing and creation.'' ...
... Thus official emergency management use of Twitter is likely to span this spectrum, from disseminating one-way messages to monitoring Twitter messages during a crisis and acting to allocate resources based on that information. The perception of Internet users as smart mobs with collective intelligence (Rheingold, 2002) may be what can drive effective use of Twitter and other social media by emergency management organizations. In this paper we explore how one fire department manages this process. ...
In this paper we consider how emergency response organizations utilize available social media technologies to communicate with the public in emergencies and to potentially collect valuable information using the public as sources of information on the ground. We discuss the use of public social media tools from the emergency management professionals’ viewpoint with a particular focus on the use of Twitter. Little research has investigated Twitter usage in crisis situations from an organizational perspective. This paper contributes to our understanding of organizational innovation, risk communication, and technology adoption by emergency management. An in-depth case study of Public Information Officers of the Los Angeles Fire Department highlights the importance of the information evangelist within emergency management organizations and details the challenges those organizations face with an engagement with social media and Twitter. This article provides insights into practices and challenges of new media implementation for crisis and risk management organizations.
... In Smart Mobs, Rheingold (2002) documents international examples of mobile and pervasive technologies of cooperation [that] make new kinds of collective action possible. This type of mass collective action illustrates unprecedented cooperation and scale in a commons. ...
From Introduction: "This paper is a guide to the rapidly growing area of research and activity I call 'new commons.' Simply put, new commons (NC) are various types of shared resources that have recently evolved or have been recognized as commons. They are commons without pre-existing rules or clear institutional arrangements. The paper introduces a map that outlines the NC resource sectors and identifies some of the salient questions that this new area of research raises. In addition, it examines the relationship between new commons and traditional common-pool resources and common property regimes. "This overview includes a survey of the physical resources, the user communities, the literature, and some of the major collective action activities. Tacking new commons over several years has demonstrated that this vast arena is inhabited by heterogeneous groups from divergent disciplines, political interests, and geographical regions that are increasingly finding the term 'commons' crucial in addressing issues of social dilemmas, degradation, and sustainability of a wide variety of shared resources. The resource sectors include scientific knowledge, voluntary associations, climate change, community gardens, wikipedias, cultural treasures, plant seeds, and the electromagnetic spectrum. All of these new resource sectors and communities require rigorous study and analysis in order to better grasp the institutional nature of these beasts. This map is designed to serve as an introductory reference guide for future scholarly work."
The Chilean students' rebellion emerged in 2011 within the wave of global protests. Even though it is an organized movement, with roots in a specific historical context, it shares with the global movement the use of new media technologies, the appropriation of public spaces, and the concern for democracy and equality. The movement deploys flexible forms of organization and mobilization such as flash mobs, in the case analyzed in this article, the GenkiDama for Education. The students create a narrative based on the famous Manga series Dragon Ball Z to reframe the conflict between students and government. As Manga fans, they open up participation to other less politically defined identities. The flash mob moment works as a communicative event in which the narrative is put into place and strengthens a sense of community in the streets of Santiago de Chile. To analyze the connections between the fictional narrative of Manga and the use of the public space, we draw on Michel de Certeau's theory on spatial practices and the function of stories and place/space. Spatial practices during the flash mob challenge the social and spatial order in order to represent a symbolic victory of the students over the political system.
The Chilean students’ rebellion emerged in 2011 within the wave of global protests. Even though it is an organized movement, with roots in a specific historical context, it shares with the global movement the use of new media technologies, the appropriation of public spaces, and the concern for democracy and equality. The movement deploys flexible forms of organization and mobilization such as
flash mobs
, in the case analyzed in this article, the GenkiDama for Education. The students create a narrative based on the famous Manga series
Dragon Ball Z
to reframe the conflict between students and government. As Manga fans, they open up participation to other less politically defined identities. The
flash mob
moment works as a communicative event in which the narrative is put into place and strengthens a sense of community in the streets of Santiago de Chile. To analyze the connections between the fictional narrative of Manga and the use of the public space, we draw on Michel de Certeau’s theory on spatial practices and the function of stories and place/space. Spatial practices during the flash mob challenge the social and spatial order in order to represent a symbolic victory of the students over the political system. Key words: Flash mob; spatial practices; narrative; space; place; Manga; students’ movement; mobilization
In this article I examine the deployment of cell phones in two different contexts. The first is the use of cell phones in a protest movement in the Philippines that resulted in the resignation of President Joseph Estrada in 2001. I then look at the marketing and consumption of cell phones in the (over)developed world, focusing on the USA. I argue that the Philippine protest movement, known as People Power II, indicates the medium's progressive potential, while the marketing of cell phones in the USA indicates the medium's reactionary potential, or, borrowing a term from Paul Virilio, the cell phone's potential as `technological nanny'. The comparison tries to steer between two orientations in cultural studies — which I characterize as the optimism of technoutopianism and the pessimism of techno-phobia — in order to appreciate the political potential of cell phones, in particular, and technology in general.
In this paper, we explore the idea that an IS could act as an institution in itself, if its legitimacy is well established, even the knowledge of the system is weak. This is in line with some theory of appropriation, and against the cognitive approach of the reason action theory. But we explore also one condition to gain legitimacy, which is that the system and proposed usage fit to the imaginary of the adopting population. Imaginary plays also a role along the appropriation process acting as a kind of pre-knowledge.
In this paper we present the design of FolkMusic, a mobile peer-to-peer entertainment system. The work reported in this paper builds on the current trends towards: 1) edutainment software, 2) increase in use of peer-to-peer technologies, and, 3) the current trend towards mobile computing solutions. Further on, the research reported in this paper builds on prior research on "folk computing" for which mobile ad- hoc peer-to-peer solutions are a focal concern. Overall, this paper contributes to research on MANETs (Mobile Ad-hoc Networks) and peer-to-peer (P2P) computing by illustrating how mobile peer-to- peer technologies can be applied to both the area of entertainment as well as for educational purposes. Further on, the FolkMusic system contributes to current technical efforts made on ad-hoc networks by providing a good example of how Internet technologies and similar stationary and stable infrastructures can be combined with highly dynamic and wireless networks.
This paper uses social network analysis to examine the interaction between corporate blogs devoted to sustainability issues and the blogosphere, a clustered online network of collaborative actors. By analyzing the structural embeddedness of a prototypical blog in a virtual community, we show the potential of online platforms to document corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and to engage with an increasingly socially and ecologically aware stakeholder base. The results of this study show that stakeholder involvement via sustainability blogs is a valuable new practice for CSR communications and stakeholder engagement. It also opens new horizons for communicating CSR issues to key constituencies online.
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