In Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold introduces the concept of smart mobs, a form of self-structuring social organization through technology-mediated, intelligent emergent behavior. According to Rheingold, smart mobs are an indication of the evolving communication technologies that will empower the people. These growing technologies include the Internet, computer-mediated communication such as Internet Relay Chat, and wireless devices like mobile phones and personal digital assistants. Methodologies like peer to peer networks and pervasive computing are also changing the ways in which people organize and share information.
A smart mob is a group that behaves intelligently or efficiently because of its exponentially increasing network links. This network enables people to connect to information and others, allowing a form of social coordination. One reason for the rise of smart mobs is the ever decreasing cost of increasingly powerful microprocessors which have allowed them to permeate throughout society — they are embedded in everything from boxes to clothes. Depending on how the technology is used, smart mobs may be beneficial or detrimental to society. Rheingold warns of the use of the technology by some to create a society similar to the one seen in George Orwell’s 1984 or by terrorists for their malicious purposes.
The Smart Mob blog details a new, real-life example of Smart Mobs in Lojo. Shorthand for locative journalism, LoJo is the name of a project launched by a team of Northwestern University graduate students to study the intersection of journalism and emerging location-based technologies.
These students are developing a multi-platform project that depicts how Chicago might change (economically, environmentally and socially) if it wins the 2016 Olympic bid. Through their project, the LoJo team hopes to create interactive and informative mobile experiences that push innovation in journalism.
As they learn how location-based technology and place-based narratives can enrich a journalistic experience, the LOJOCONNECT.COM blog documents their progress and provide opportunities for others to engage in the discovery process.
Using the bouquet of emerging mobile and location-based technologies (from GPS-enabled mobile phones to interactive online maps), locative storytelling provides multi-media content that enhances a user’s connection to a given place. At its best, this kind of interactive media gives users increased entry points, and more control over, any given story, thereby enabling deeper and more vibrant experiences.
I found Tapscott and Williams book Wikinomics to be a thorough exploration of open sourcing and mass collaboration in business. According to Tapscott and Williams, Wikinomics is based on four ideas: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally. The use of mass collaboration in a business environment, in recent history, can be seen as an extension of the trend in business to outsource: externalize formerly internal business functions to other business entities. The difference however is that instead of an organized business body brought into being specifically for a unique function, mass collaboration relies on free individual agents to come together and cooperate to improve a given operation or solve a problem. This kind of outsourcing is also referred to as crowdsourcing, to reflect this difference.
In their first chapter, Tapscott and Williams introduce the modern concept of Wikinomics, “Millions of media buffs now use blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and personal broadcasting to add their voices to a vociferous stream of dialogue and debate called the “blogosphere.” Employees drive performance by collaborating with peers across organizational boundaries, creating what we call a “wiki workplace.” Customers become “prosumers” by cocreating goods and services rather than simply consuming the end product. So-called supply chains work more effectively when the risk, reward, and capability to complete major projects including massively complex products like cars, motercycles, and airplanes – are distributed across planetary networks of partners who work as peers.”
The book also discusses the seven new models of mass collaboration:
- peer pioneers
- ideagoras
- prosumers
- new Alexandrians
- platforms for participation
- global plant floor
- wiki workplace
In one of Tapscott’s blog posts this week he announces a new section on the Wikinomics website that calls attention to Wikinomics in action. It’s essentially a blogroll or link list of sites that epitomize the Wikinomics principles. The list contaiins the usual suspects, Amazon, Digg, YouTube, Second Life, but also features some cool and different sites not mentioned in the book.
Marketocracy attempts to find the best investors in the world and then track, analyze, and evaluate their trading activity. Encyclopedia of life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about all life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Radiohead remix lets visitors remix their own version of the band’s new single then post it on the web to be voted on by fans. Sermo is the social networking site for physicians where doctors around the world can share research, case studies, and observations. On Ponoko, aspiring designers can create a mockup of their choice and have it manufactured by professionals. Finally, Kluster enables users to work together to solve problems big and small, from a small marketing campaign to a large invention.
The book is coupled with a blog and a wiki, a now completed playbook contributed by a community of readers and experts. Below are several key quotes by contributers to the “missing” chapter of the book.
“Any open system has the capacity to respond to change and disorder by reorganizing itself at a higher level of organization. Disorder becomes a critical player, an ally that can provoke a system to self-organize into new forms of being… chaos is necessary to new creative ordering.” – Margaret Wheatley
