Smart Mobs 169
| Smart Mobs | |
| author | Howard Rheingold |
| pages | 288 |
| publisher | Perseus Books |
| rating | 92% |
| reviewer | Curtis Frye |
| ISBN | 0738206083 |
| summary | As the possibilities for a wireless future unfold, Rheingold argues for an open network we can use to our best advantage. |
The central thesis of Smart Mobs is that wireless communication technologies offer a new way for folks to combine their knowledge and energy. As Howard says in the book's introduction:
"If the transition period we are entering in the first decade of the twenty-first century resembles the advent of PCs and the Internet, the new technology regime will turn out to be an entirely new medium, not simply a means of receiving stock quotes or email on the train or surfing the Web while walking down the street. Mobile Internet, when it really arrives, will not be just a way to do old things while moving. It will be a way to do things that couldn't be done before." (p. xiv)
I've done my share of pie in the sky predicting based on what other people have written, so I appreciate it when a writer takes the time to find out what's happening on the ground with regard to the new technologies they're writing about. As it turns out, Howard spent quite a bit of time in Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, and Redmond (with Microsoft's resident online sociologist) finding out how people behave in countries with more advanced wireless communication grids and standards that let people send text messages to any wireless-equipped device (not just to users on the same network as in the US). Those stories, and the personalities driving them, are all chronicled in Smart Mobs.
As engaging as Howard is as a writer, I couldn't give his work such a high rating if I didn't feel his book was something a literate but not necessarily technically sophisticated reader could pick up and, having read it, understand the forces at work. Fortunately, it's all there. I'd imagine that most all of the folks who buy Smart Mobs will know about Moore's Law, which states that the number of computing elements that could be fit in a given space would double every eighteen months. There are other forces at work, though, and Howard lists the three other "laws" that apply to wireless networking in a social context:
- 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.
Web logs ("blogs"), eBay, and other online communities are examples of how users have made the Internet a network that conforms to Reed's Law.
So what's not to like about a new wireless Internet where the users are free to roam and create their own groups, spread their information, and share resources? From the point of view of the communication operators (a.k.a. the phone companies), they see little good coming out of creating a medium where they give up their powerful position as information gatekeepers. And, of course, there are vested financial interests on the part of the companies that have leased the rights to different parts of the radio frequency spectrum, even though there are technologies that can avoid interference and make sure all devices can "play nice."
On the political side, wireless technologies have had tremendous impacts, speeding the downfall of a government in the Philippines and being used to coordinate action during the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle. I wouldn't be too surprised if there are plans in place to black out on civilian wireless networks on an emergency basis in case of similar activity in the U.S..
We're taking the first baby steps toward a new wireless network, but there's a lot to be determined, both technologically and in terms of the freedoms we'll enjoy in using the network. Smart Mobs is a wonderful introduction to the issues at hand, and Howard Rheingold makes a powerful argument for an open network we can use to our best advantage.
Curtis D. Frye is the editor and chief reviewer of Technology and Society Book Reviews. He is also the author of three online courses and ten books , including Privacy-Enhanced Business from Quorum Books. You can purchase Smart Mobs from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Unlikely. (Score:5, Interesting)
If the sum of knowledge is available in a smart mob, then this knowledge is also available to any hostile individual that taps into the mob network. The information's quality is only as good as its most trustworthy member.
Information value (Score:5, Interesting)
This is shit. Utter shit. Not just the web log link, but the law - think about it. Imagine 1 person joining Slashdot. According to this law, he will make more difference to the value of the site than any person before him. This also applies to nodes in a network, clearly.
Anyone who isn't an idiot can see that rather than exponential, it is more accurately logarithmic, or at the very most sigmoidal. Anyone who disagrees with me, think about it. The claim is that the bigger a network is, the greater the impact of a single new node is. That's what an exponential function means.
Dumb. Dumb, wrong and idiotic.
Re:Information value (Score:3, Insightful)
The so-called network or weblog effects would seem to be nothing but committees expanded to the size of the on-line population. Which would also tend to imply that the quality of decisions reached by such methods would be mediocre at best.
sPh
Re:Information value (Score:2)
The same reasoning can be extended to small committees and even large ones. Given the right conditions (good organization and internal discipline) committees can communicate amongst themselves better, as well as receive external input and do better, faster research.
On the other hand, I think the rules quoted by the parent poster certainly stretch the application of math to empirical observations of network effect more than a little too far. A superfically plausible rule of thumb and an actual verifiable mathematical relationship between number of users and the usefulness of a network are two very different things.
Christopher
Value function is applications, not architecture (Score:2, Interesting)
The value function f(n) of a network, where n is the number of nodes, is determined by the application(s) built on that network. f(n) is certainly linear for most one-to-many broadcast networks; but to say it is exponential (or polynomial or sigmoidal or logarithmic) based only on the architecture is presumptuous.
Whether a given network architecture is end-to-end or broadcast, allows subgroups, etc., merely puts constraints on what kinds of applications can run over that network; but the value is determined by the applications, not the architecture.
Some non-architectural factors also contribute to the value function; consider two networks with identical architecture, one with ping times of 1 millisecond and the other with ping times of 1 month.
Nonetheless, the argument about the value of subgroups is important. (As an aside, the number of distinct unordered subgroups of a network with N nodes is not N^N, it is the sum of (N choose M) for all M=1..N, which turns out to be more than N^N for N>4, I think... just add up all the numbers on the N+1th row of Pascal's triangle.) But not all possible subgroups are interesting, and the real-world constraint on their "value" is again based on the application.
If one considers subgroups based on some kind of social relationships, I would suggest that the real-world multiplier of value here is the average number of subgroups that participants are comfortable with, and the number that the application can usefully manage. For example, some MMORPGs have various different chat channels for different kinds of social structures; but any given player is going to have a hard time differentiating chat from more than 2-4 channels/organizations, with the primary constraint there being usability of the chat UI. Once it becomes too confusing to figure out which chat goes with which organization, it all blurs together and the value is reduced to near the value of having one global channel.
Re:Value function is applications, not architectur (Score:2, Informative)
So it is "exponential", just not N^N.
Here's a cool page about Pascal's triangle. [tripod.com]
Re:Information value (Score:2)
Re:Information value (Score:2)
Re:Information value (Score:2)
In any case, simply observing that there are 2^N possible groups doesn't mean that any significant fraction of them come into being. It's the number that actually come into being that are important, and those are limited by how much time people have and human social dynamics.
Re:Information value (Score:2)
Re:Information value (Score:1, Insightful)
With weblogs, it's different: out of all the weblog publishers, each user selects his own subset from which he pulls information. If /. had transitive trust ratings, each user setting his own trust level for other users, then Reed's Law would apply.
Speak for yourself!! (Score:2)
You're wrong (Score:2)
Planet P Weblog [planetp.cc] - Liberty with Technology.
Re:You're wrong (Score:2, Informative)
I suggested maybe ln(n) or the sigmoidal function 1/(1+e**-n). Hell, your argument implies a linear relationship, which is still a far cry from exponential. Yeah, the more people on the telephone network the better. But, if some person only now gets a telephone, you are saying that the network for the rest of us will have an increase in value greater than ever seen before.
Nay, nay and thrice nay.
Or maybe just twice nay? (Score:1)
In other words, if the value of a Yoyodyne Communicator to its user is proportional to the natural log of the number of people who have them, then the total value of all Yoyodyne Communicators is n ln n, which is asymptotically greater than linear. Result: each of us experiences a vanishingly small increase in value, but multiplied across the total number of users, the increase in value is greater than ever seen before.
Re:Or maybe just twice nay? (Score:2)
If one more user joins Slashdot, Slashdot might get statistically a tiny bit better. And that same user might also join Kuro5hin, User Friendly, a handful of blogs, and make them all tiny bits better also?
I just don't see the sum of all those tiny bits ever adding up to N^N. And at some point I believe these communities get too big, and fragment (AOL, Compuserve, and even Slashdot might be examples.) So does the network then benefit nine times by having one community split into three parts? That might be where these "exponential benefits" factor in.
I guess what sticks in my craw is that it's hard to imagine a single AOL disk ever improving the world in any way, shape or form. But I suppose for that Joe Sixpack and his family, the world just got a whole lot better. They simply have no idea how much better it could be.
Information theory (Score:4, Insightful)
Some Debate:
Point 1: Having thought about it, I'm not all that excited about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, or the Law of Gravity. But I don't have much choice in the matter. I could rant and rage against how unjust the second law of thermodynamics is and call the whole law 'shit', but that isn't going to do any thing about the fact that energy will always flow from localized to diffused states. Reed's law is similar. I can't say that I exactly have a warm and fuzzy feeling about it, but I cannot deny its existance and truth.
Similarly, if you think about it, you will agree that the value of Slashdot increases with every new member (which is what the law states). The law does not state that a new member will make more difference to the value of the site than any prior person, as you suggest that it does. What it does state, is that a new member will provide a potential link to each other registered member of Slashdot, thereby increasing the factorial graph representation of N users by N+1.
Point 2: Clearly, if you've taken a college level calculus course, a group theory course, or a quantum theory course, you will know that logarithm is expressible in terms of multiplication, just as division is expressible in terms of multiplication, and subtraction in terms of addition. Logarithm and exponents are essentially the same thing. Now, I have thought about this topic, I have studied information theory and network theory, and have worked as a network engineer. The law is valid. The claim is not that "the bigger a network is, the greater the impact of a single new node is". You are confusing "big and great" with "numerous and potential". The more accurate claim is that the more numerous the network is, the more potential a single new node has to interact with other nodes.
Point 3: I hate to break it to you, but the fact of the matter is that not only is the law valid, it progresses at a rate faster than exponential. That is, Reed's Law is factorial, and is based on graph theory combinatorics. You appear to be trying to understand Reed's Law according to linear dynamics, which is why it doesn't make sense to you. Its a nonlinear function and requires modular mathematics, such as eigenfunctions and eigenvalues to properly calculate for a problem such as Slashdot. When you approach the problem of Slashdot with Reed's Law, eigenfunctions, and factorial combinatorics, it works out rather simply.
Case 4: This claim is similar to the prevailing 'wisdom' that a single vote doesn't matter in a large crowd. This unfortunate concept is, in large part, due to the popularity of statistics. As my old professor use to say in statistics class, 'Averages are for average people.' Moreover, every vote does count in an election, and every node does increase, factorially, in potential links to other nodes in a group. If one is able to keep track of factorially increasing links, then the whole problem can be tracked without resorting to using statistics.
Re:+4? Are the moderators mad? (Score:2)
Re:Unlikely. (Score:2)
Z
Re:Unlikely. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Unlikely. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll use this oppurtunity to tell you I thoroughly enjoyed your book. So much so, that I was inspired to create my own blog devoted to the issues surrounding it.
Planet P Weblog [planetp.cc]
Re:Unlikely. (Score:1)
Re:Unlikely. (Score:2)
Not if people can identify and select in favour of those most trustworthy people. How they do it might vary - on the internet, chances are you'll pick out bbc.co.uk as a reliable news source based on their offline reputation.
Or a system might arise whereby the users themselves select particularly informative, insightful, interesting or funny posts and mark them up as worthy of attention, while reducing the level of priority given to trolls and flamebaiters.
Or you might have a facility in whatever software you use to access this information to filter the data based on how much you trust the source. Scoring, killfiling, whatever.
Re:Unlikely. (Score:2)
I would think a subversive is harder to detect on-line, as any on-line credentials these days can be easily forged. For example, am I a geek, a hacker, a Federal Agent, or a corporate security executive? Would you be able to tell from my on-line activities here on Slashdot?
Would you say that an organization that has been successfully infiltrated by such a person provides "good" or "bad" information? What if I'm normally totally 3l33t, always provide top quality info, but today I get arrested and my company plays ball with the DoJ and begins subversive posting under my name? Or apply a classic man-in-the-middle attack. Does the value of the network go up or down? The value of my groups?
I don't mean to turn this into a discussion about authentication or crypto or anything like that, but in today's environment the chances are good that a non-trustworthy member would have little problem turning any random group into an ineffective cesspool of backbiting and endless discussions. (Perhaps by posting questions such as these?) I don't see the value of the network going up in cases like that.
Re:Unlikely. (Score:1)
Information Arms Race (Score:2, Interesting)
This is precisely correct, and you should read the book to find out more. Open reputation mechanisms in such networks (Slashdot being a prime example) help to ensure the trustworthiness of the network and its individual nodes. One must accept as given that hostile forces are looking in and, in true Internet fashion, adapt or route around the intrusion.
As Rheingold states, there is a continuous competition or arms race between the development of privacy mechanisms in these technologies and technologies to counter that privacy. It is very similar to the war between those who want information to be free and those who want to charge money for it.
I'm almost finished Smart Mobs find it a most excellent compendium of the effect that communications technologies are having on our culture. I recommend it to all.
Good job! (Score:1)
Oh well at least nobody has publicly come out and said that Santa isn't real.
Value of networks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Value of networks... (Score:5, Informative)
Excellent question... try here [wikipedia.org], which says that Reed's law is measured in utility. Utility is then defined to be "a measure of the satisfaction gained from the consumption of a good or service."
You could measure the feedback of people using the network over time. Something like Osgood's symantec differential [ndirect.co.uk] would standardize the responses. Just one idea, I'd be interested to see what others come up with.
I am also reading this book. (Score:5, Interesting)
Misleading title.. (Score:1, Funny)
"Smart Mobs"??
I was expecting a story about Tony Soprano getting his PhD in Molecular Biology or the like.
I want a refund.
Given the talk in the summary about MUDs... (Score:2)
Ratings (Score:2, Interesting)
This review was just a string of the usual cyberspeak when it comes to wifi and online communities. Where is the beef?!
orangeguru
Re:Ratings (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ratings (Score:1)
Bugger.
orangeguru
How predictable is this, actually? (Score:3, Insightful)
However I do wonder just how much we can predict. As these systems get more complex and include more factors, what can we actually say and predict about them beyond some basics and metaphors?
I recall Vernor Vinge's idea of Singularity [umich.edu], the creation of greater-than human intelligence. Maybe we're witnessing a hint of that as people connect to machines and each others like neurons in the brain. However, the irony is that we may not be smart enough to know if something like that is happening.
This sounds like a great book and an interesting phenomena, and I plan to buy it. But I wonder how much we can say about this phenomena.
Probably close (Score:2)
Check out Asimov's Foundation series of SciFi books.
The core of the story(s) comes down to the study of group behaviour over time, even including 'random' individuals affecting the total mass, by the character of Hari Seldon.
We may be at the computational edge of being able to this.
Wireless comms has already changed our lives (Score:5, Informative)
I'd agree that we are on the verge of a revolution similar to that in 1992-95 with the PC and Internet. Never before have so many people had such easy access to communications. And since human society is essentially about communications, this makes for extremely interesting times.
But I think many sociologists make the mistake of thinking that technology can change us in some way. It changes the way we behave, but it just reinforces the way we are. People stick with family and friends above all, and do not just form mobs because it's possible. If anything, totally flexible mobile communications will reinforce existing social structures (like family) that are constantly under attack from modern urban life, rather than creating new social forms.
In Belgium, the SMS short-message service is extremely heavily used but mainly for saying 'honey, I'm almost home', playing trivial games, chatting with sex lines (actually robots or operators) and voting in TV contests. Smart mobs? Not really.
Re:Wireless comms has already changed our lives (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Wireless comms has already changed our lives (Score:2)
Re:Wireless comms has already changed our lives (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000439.html
http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000403.html
http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000383.html
Smart shoppers, smart thiefs, smart cops? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Smart shoppers, smart thiefs, smart cops? (Score:2)
The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its least intelligent member divided by the number of people in the mob.
- Terry Pratchett, 'Maskerade'
Re:Smart shoppers, smart thiefs, smart cops? (Score:2)
The IQ of a mob is the IQ of the least intelligent person, divided by the amount of media coverage, multiplied by the size of the crowd.
Re:Smart shoppers, smart thiefs, smart cops? (Score:1)
Hang on, that can't be right. In that case, adding people to the mob would increase its IQ, which I very much doubt. Also, a mob that is entirely ignored by the media would be infinitely intelligent...
Re:Smart shoppers, smart thiefs, smart cops? (Score:1)
Damn you and your pagan "math"....
Its witchcraft! Witchcraft, I tell you!
If I have to hear one more thing about The Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I think i'm going to puke.
Look, i'm only going to say this once.
THE WELL WAS NEITHER UNIQUE, NOR THE FIRST TRUE "ONLINE COMMUNITY". They were no more "visionaries" than the people who frequented countless other large BBS'es that were common in the late 70's and early 80's. Its just that these people tend to be a little more vocal and persistant in their whining for some reason, somehow feeling that they deserve to be repeatedly acknowledged for their vastly overhyped, overrated, earth-shattering contribution to society. And even if they actually HAD been the golly-gee pioneers they want desparately to be acknowledged as, guess what --- there were still communities before them. So get over it. Im sure they're nice people and all, but, sorry gang....there wasn't anything unique, profound, or ground-breaking about The Well. Period.
Cheers,
Thank you (Score:2)
It's a big circle-jerk. The offenders in question, like most of their Man Francisco pals, would benefit from getting a good, solid ass-whupping.
Re:Thank you (Score:1, Flamebait)
Now theres a thought -- Maybe The Well can be the first underwater online community!
Listening to bozos from The Well claim they were the first online community is like saying Columbus discovered America. You're just plain wrong, and wrong in so many ways its not even funny.
Re:Thank you (Score:2)
Off the top of my head, Compuserve predates the Well by at *least* 10 years. See what I mean?
Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well (Score:2)
PCPursuit was a good story.
FIDONet was a good story.
BIX was a good story.
CompuServe is a good story.
QuantumLink is better story.
Brainstorm/XNET is an even better story.
The WELL isn't a story. There were hundreds (if not thousands) of WELL-like enclaves that had come and gone years before these guys even flipped the power switch.
If you have a responsibility as an author to be honest to the story. The world doesn't need yet another person latching onto a piece of horseshit and perpetuating it as if it were fact. Wise up.
I'll use the same analogy I pointed out earlier... Who discovered America, Mr. Rheingold? By propping up The WELL as some sort of miracle happening, you're doing the literary equivalent of responding with "Well, Columbus, obviously"...
I would have more respect for you if you were to point out the equivalent of "The Americas have been continually inhabited by humans for at least the past 15,000 years. That, and archaeological evidence suggests that Norse explorers had arrived in North America and begun colonizing the reigon a full 800 years before Columbus."
See, *thats* an interesting story, Mr. Rheingold.
Cheers,
Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well (Score:2, Insightful)
From this POV, it was probably the first community recognized as such by the official culture establishment.
Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well (Score:2)
So was Compuserve in 1975. A full decade before The WELL was even created.
Cheers,
Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well (Score:1)
Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well (Score:1, Insightful)
Not many of the communities survived, and this combined with the sheer number of "important" people from the literary, advertising, legal and other non-geek professions made (and makes) it unique.
they were unique and ground-breaking because.... (Score:1)
the main point that people make about The Well is that they *did* speak strongly, whiners or not...not whether they are the actual FIRST group to do it. they are still one of the largest and long-lasting online communities, with a history of "real-world" events that were spun from online discussion. moreso than any other. please correct me if you know of any other online community having more:
marriages, pregnancies, screenplays, books of fiction, business plans, political changes, etc.
no one has made any claims that the Well was an "earth-shattering contribution"...that's YOUR perception, because it has been written about a million times.
your comment might as well be about Coca-cola, and how ubiquitous it is, yet it wasn't the first soft drink of its kind. it may not be, but to date, it's been seen as the most sucessful.
Re:they were unique and ground-breaking because... (Score:2)
marriages, pregnancies, screenplays, books of fiction, business plans, political changes, etc
I'll give you two. Compuserve and FIDOnet. Here's a link to Google [google.com] to get you started. Have fun.
Cheers,
Re:they were unique and ground-breaking because... (Score:2)
GEnie had close to 100,000 users by the time The WELL came into existance. Compuserve had close to a quarter of a million, having come into existance a full 15 years before The WELL. Lay off the hash and hop aboard the Clue Train (tm), hippy. Jesus Christ...
And Californians wonder why the rest of the country laughs at them..sheesh.
Re:If I have to hear one more thing about The Well (Score:2, Insightful)
The WELL [well.com] might not be as important or unique as it once was, and it may be true that it gets more press than it deserves, and it is true that at times it may be insular and navel-gazingly self-contratulatory, but to dismissively lump it in as one more BBS is completely unfair and even deeply ignorant.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org] was organized and founded at the WELL. The annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy [cfp.org] conferences were started and are still ran at the WELL. Wired Magazine [wired.com] was partially organized on the WELL. The infamous and frauduluent cyberporn Time cover story [google.com] that made passage of the CDA a foregone conclusion was systematically demolished and exposed [lycos.com] and opposition organized at the WELL. And these are just the most salient examples.
If I have to hear one more thing about Slashdot... (Score:2)
SLASHDOT WAS NEITHER UNIQUE, NOR THE FIRST TRUE "ONLINE COMMUNITY". They were no more "visionaries" than the people who frequented countless other large BBS'es that were common in the late 70's and early 80's. Its just that these people tend to be a little more vocal and persistant in their whining for some reason, somehow feeling that they deserve to be repeatedly acknowledged for their vastly overhyped, overrated, earth-shattering contribution to society. And even if they actually HAD been the golly-gee pioneers they want desparately to be acknowledged as, guess what --- there were still communities before them. So get over it. Im sure they're nice people and all, but, sorry gang....there wasn't anything unique, profound, or ground-breaking about Slashdot. Period.
What kind of value (Score:4, Funny)
A quick Google give us this http://www.reed.com/Papers/GFN/reedslaw.html article. He defines value as
Using his definition of "value", it is possible to defend his position. Additional nodes on a network can increase the overall connectivity value of the network.That does not necessarily make the network more valuable in an informational, social or monetary sense to any individual inside or outside of the group.
Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots (Score:2)
Are we talking about a new and unique form of human organization that can actually solve problems? Or will they just be a new form of easily-manipulated ideological sounding board, like Talk Radio, that ends up braking a lot of windows, besieging office buildings, and hassling people on a hit list drawn up by a clever organizer?
I've heard anecdotal evidence that the angry protests that led to the bloody "Miss World" riots in Nigeria were coordinated by cell phones and text messaging. If this is true, we may long for the day of Dumb Mobs.
Stefan
Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots (Score:2)
Though the Smart Mob theory is interesting, it may be that the Mob may use the "Smart" part to do some very stupid things.
I also wonder - will we see battling Mobs? Will the creation of one Smart Mob spawn others as countermeasures? Or will the speed of response make things far more integrated?
Of course in the end, it's what we (in general) do with technology.
Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots (Score:2)
Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots (Score:5, Interesting)
A little over two years ago, the near-total penetration of mobile phones allowed a mob consisting of a small number of truckers and farmers to bring the UK almost to a standstill - they were able to coordinate blockades of oil refineries and depots all over the country, and organise go-slow convoys on the major motorways. If each group of protestors had needed to have access to a landline phone to communicate, things would have been far more difficult.
I gather rival football hooligans have actually been known to contact each other by mobile before the match to arrange fights. Mad.
Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots (Score:2)
US truckers did that 20 years ago with CB radios.
Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots (Score:1)
Was the printing press a good thing or a bad thing? Or does the moral value lie in human agency?
Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots (Score:2)
While I'm not a McLuhanite, I think that there is a kernel of truth in the notion that the medium is the message.
The fact that Mein Kampf is a book, a persistent object, makes it not only more readily available, but easier to critique and rebuff. Hitler's radio broadcasts, on the other hand . . . they planted their seeds of nationalism and hatred and wafted off into the ether. It was harder to pin them down, analyze them on the fly, critique them after the fact.
So: What kind of message does the form of wireless-gadget communication lend itself to? How does the audiance engage with these messages? What kind of accountability or possibility of critique is there?
Stefan
Am I the only one? (Score:2)
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:1)
I never really understood why MUDs are fun, they are too "limiting" because everything follows set rules and code, not allowing the flexibility of AD&D paper & pencil RPGs nor the eye-candy of graphical MUDs. Ah well...
As for online mobs, it's quite diverse. On my old MUD I've seen the biggest idiots grouping up with pedantic puppets to form a mob out of a pop of 500 which would be laughable were it not for admin support. And I've seen groups of 3 or 4 people dominating an entire 10+k forum community with sheer volume of posts and dry, though good British wit/humour. Those were the times. :)
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:1)
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:1)
Website, too. (Score:4, Funny)
I've gotten to page 53 of the book, which is dense, yet so information rich that I carry it with me everywhere, so I can try to squeeze out a few extra paragraphs on subway platforms and in elevators.
It's an excellent exploration of where mobile technology may lead.
VOIP = Number of wireless devices you've got... (Score:1)
Say I baught 300 wireless routers and decided to start flooding UBB's and whatnot with BS...Fex, I could start a rumor that AMD's CPU's are crap or something of the sort. I could start one heck of a rumor using some wireless routers to mimic different IP stacks (Once IP ver 6 comes out, and if we had a wireless netwoek, I'd bet they'll drop in price 100-fold+) and a decent AI, plus some computing power.
This also brings up an interesting idea. 1 Guy (me, or someone else) can make one heck of as stink using machines. As AI intellegence increases and processer power increases, so too will their ability to stuff, it will no doubt get to the point of being a lifeform, and our majority-rule society will become extremly outdated. Just think, I build 10 robots and since I built them, I have some leverage over them, so I get 11 votes, while you only get 1...
So, in short, this is the communist version of the internet. Everyone is trusted to do their job, no more and no less. Not a good idea, considering that if the protocol isn't robust enough, someone can set their IP to their neighbors IP and crash all the routers on the entire block. It will take a feat of engineering to get everyone together on this. At least we have some regulation with large telco's running rampant.
Point in case, you've got packet loss...ping...noise...I'd think a fiber line would have much better quality and speed than a 100-mbps Wifi router, plus the routers would take forever to get between geographically distant points. In a suburban enviroment, you'd have mabye 600+ routers before you get to some geographically distant place, fex, between chicago and say, newyork, and it'd take 2-3 seconds to get their, and thats if the router has a broadcasting distance of 20-40 feet()plus the people who decided to get them nice 5-10 mile broadcasting routers). Not everyone is going to buy a 1-5 mile router, some are going to be cheap about it and buy a 30-foot wifi hub and leech off of their neighbors for access.
Great idea in consept, but you'll need to rework it into some solid standards with certain regulation and standardization agencies before it can really take off, much less be better than what we've currently got. And, it's got to monentarily beat the current standard.
Interesting but hardly new. (Score:2)
(The following quotes are from EIES users circa 1983 -- they make just as much sense if you s/EIES/Slashdot/ for example:
"I can't think when the system is down."
"I can live without EIES, but I can't LIVE without EIES."
"I find myself staying up late at night and getting up early in the morning just to use the damn thing.")
And it occurs to me, having read The Victorian Internet, that similar sentiments were probably expressed by telegraph operators back then.
Re:Interesting but hardly new. (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed Hiltz's book, and the work of her partner, Murray Turoff, is important, and of course I cited it in The Virtual Community [rheingold.com]. But again, that isn't the book under review here.
Re:Interesting but hardly new. (Score:2)
I must say you seem surprisingly defensive about a comment that in no way maligned your book, unless you have such a deep emotional investment in believing that you have come up with some new observation that you feel maligned. I haven't read your book, so perhaps you have -- although it seems to me that human sociological phenomena are based in no small part on the way humans are wired, so while there may be new expressions of sociological phenomena, I don't think there'll be new phenomena without a much more fundamental change in the human experience than "just" better communication and data access.
It is the wielder, not the tool (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It is the wielder, not the tool (Score:1)
Re:It is the wielder, not the tool (Score:1)
Housing the cloud (Score:2, Interesting)
802.11 nodes do not give you access to the cloud. The cloud is built from landlines, and this isn't likely to change due to the level of investment put into the wires for the landlines that is where the bulk of the cloud changes.
To get from an 802.11 node to the cloud, you've got to interface to the landlines. Therefore, a gatekeeper is required somewhere along the way.
It's hard to imagine enough 802.11 deployment in the hands of individuals to create enough of an infrastructure to be interesting. That is, you'd have to build enough 802.11 to equal some interesting proportion of the bulk of the cloud (The Internet) at large.
- David
Smart Mobs == Flash Crowds ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has the author acknowledged Larry Niven??
Regards David
Re:Smart Mobs == Flash Crowds ?? (Score:1)
I think Larry Niven is one of those people that doesn't get as much attention. Those who know his work appriciate it. Not to downplay Howard Rheingold's work, but it is more mainstream I have found...again, not passig judegment on quality, just catigory...
-frozen
Re:Smart Mobs == Flash Crowds ?? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Smart Mobs == Flash Crowds ?? (Score:1)
karma happens between posts
92%? (Score:3, Funny)
loose lips.. (Score:2, Funny)
Discussion of the Book on the Well (Score:1)
Smart, huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
2. There are a lot of good things about this as well. If there are enough social impediments to people "mobbing" too much, then the good things (emergency communications, realtime local news, local problem-solving) could become a real boon for a lot of people, with the added benefit of solving simple, local problems (from traffic jams to minor flooding, etc) without 43 layers of bureaucrats. Think of realtime volunteer community work, or for that matter realtime local volunteer entertainment.
3. Some kind of "reputation system" would be cool for that kind of thing. i.e. "John Thomas," a totally unknown person says a bomb went off in the capitol, so you ignore it because the source isn't reliable. "Joe Cool," a well-known and reliable source, says there's an accident on highway 50 blocking traffic so you take the next exit.
4. So, bad, good, indifferent. Don't know how it will turn out. Will probably have one, may never turn it on.
Middlemen with money pay to stay in the middle! (Score:1)
So, yeah, it might change your life, but only as long as the fat cats get fatter at the same time.
If people started building their own public wireless backbones and created a big global ISP that was free to everyone, you can bet your bottom dollar that the members of congress who get the most donations from the fat cats would suddenly be screaming about how terrorists could use this network to detonate a dirty bomb in grandma's backyard.
Oh, that kind of mobs... (Score:2)
Probably.
Political conflict between open and closed systems (Score:1)
Are the technologically sophisticated -- such as those who read and post here -- going to attempt to influence the outcome? Because the MPAA, the RIAA, Microsoft, Time-Warner-AOL are actively lobbying regulators and legislators.
I've tried to make the stakes and the nature of these conflicts clear to people who might be interested in political change and don't know technology developments. What I wonder is how many people who understand the potential of emerging technologies are willing to engage in the political battles over control of these technologies.
I've paid my contributions to The EFF [eff.org] and I've submitted my public comments to the FCC [fcc.gov] and I urge other Slashdot readers to do so as well.
Re:Give me a break (Score:2)
Re:Give me a break (Score:4, Funny)
It's just a fucking computer network! It's not gonna change society, there are no new paradigms.
It's just a fucking wireless with pictures! It's not gonna change society, there are no new paradigms.
It's just a fucking way to transmit voice over the telegraph! It's not gonna change society, there are no new paradigms.
It's just a fucking round piece of rock! It's not gonna change society, there are no new paradigms.
Re:Give me a break (Score:1)
Re:wow ! (Score:1)
A serious answer (Score:2)
Re:Smart Mobs? (Score:4, Funny)