Rating: 
Summary: Smart mobs, really smart book
Review: "Smart mobs" sounds like an oxymoron: after all, what's more impulsive or uncontrolled than a mob? It's typical of Howard Rheingold to throw down such a brightly-colored rhetorical gauntlet, and then to describe how smart mobs are emerging in places as diverse as Tokyo, anti-globalization protests, and virtual communities. Forget images of mobs storming the Bastille, or rioters: smart mobs are a new kind of social organization, made possible by real-time, connective technologies-- cell phones, SMS, pagers, and the Web. If old-fashioned mobs were just giant assemblies of individuals, communications technologies give them nervous systems, the ability to coordinate their actions, to work together, and respond to changes and challenges. Smart mobs are not automatically good or evil. The crowds that brought down Phillipine president Joseph Estrada responded to calls put out via SMS. Anti-globalization protesters have been avidly embraced network technologies. So has Al Qaeda.Some readers will doubtless find familiar ideas in "Smart Mobs:" for whatever odd reason, 2002 has been The Year of Books About Self-Organizing Social Networks, thanks to writers as different at Steven Johnson ("Emergence") and Mark Taylor ("The Moment of Complexity"). But Rheingold is scrupulous and generous about acknowleding his influences; besides, the real value of his book lies in his own fieldwork, and his reflections on what the smart mob phenomenon will mean for business, politics, and social life. Even if your copy of Wolfram is dog-eared and the spine is weak from re-reading (and let's face it, whose isn't), it's still worth following Rheingold through Shibuya, Helsinki, and the Web...
Rating: 
Summary: Keen on Smart Mobs
Review: As one who needed a basic primer on various areas of technology--past, present, and future--and their implications for the human being, I found "Smart Mobs" to be both helpful and conversational. Rheingold's journalistic style kept the topics easy to understand, interesting to read, and fairly light hearted in spite of some rather daunting conclusions that one could draw from his research. As well, those who want to delve further into the various topics discussed will find his endnotes quite helpful--annotated are works from a number of key figures who a) are making, or have made, breakthroughs in technology, or b) provided insightful critiques on those breakthroughs. I found that engaging in "Smart Mobs" opened the door to further research and understanding of this seemingly complex and very progressive area of study.
Rating:
Summary: Here it Comes
Review: By reading this review you're participating in smart mob technology. Congratulations. I try to stay abreast of science and media technologies, but occasionally a book comes across my desk (I'm a journalist) that puts the pieces together in a way that induces epiphanies in readers - casting a shadow in their minds that sends their thoughts to the book again and again. In "Smart Mobs" Howard Rheingold looks at the wireless ubiquitous vomitous glorious instruments that continue to invade our lives, and asks some highly relevant questions about how they'll reshape our social structures, what it will mean to always be connected, and what threats this technology poses to "individuality", human rights, health, and sanity. He reminds us in a McLuhanesque way that any time you use a tool to change the world, it also changes you. Digital telepathy, augmented reality, computers coordinating human interaction - it's all here. It's all big.
Rating:
Summary: Politics au Naturel gives it four Plumeria blossoms
Review: Having read the first book by Howard, and finding this on his site, we had to have it, since an important part of our online cybersyndicated toungue-in-cheek Political CALMintery radio prgram, Politics au Naturel, depends on cyber distribution. The clarity is amazing, the premise of what might be is astounding, and we're going to put it in practice for the upcoming election thriller season. [...]
Rating:
Summary: Remote Control To The World
Review: How many of you recall that EF Hutton commercial that started off by saying, "When EF Hutton talks, people listen". The same thought can be applied to Howard Rheingold. Rheingold is veteran technology watcher and well-publised futurist. He has identified yet another transformative technology. In 'Smart Mobs' he describes in vivid detail how large, geographically dispersed groups connected only by thin threads of communications techology, such as text messaging, e-mail, cell phones, two-way pagers, and web sites, can draw together in the blink of an eye, groups of people together for a collective cause. From various parts of the world, Rheingold, has gathered stories about engineers and inventors of all sorts, working feverishly to create ever-smaller and more powerful devices that contribute to this new paradigm. In this book,Rheingold points out examples of Smart Mobs such as the swarms of demonstrators who used mobile phones, Web sites, laptops and handheld computers to coordinate their protests against the World Trade Organization in November of 1999. Rheingold shows a concern of smart mobs other than describing the weath of new communications technology that is available and coming. He is also concerned about the social, political, economic, environmental and even genetic consequences of the ever-expanding and more intrusive plethora of multidirectional communications technology. This book is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Remote Control To The World
Review: How many of you recall that EF Hutton commercial that started off by saying, "When EF Hutton talks, people listen". The same thought can be applied to Howard Rheingold. Rheingold is veteran technology watcher and well-publised futurist. He has identified yet another transformative technology. In 'Smart Mobs' he describes in vivid detail how large, geographically dispersed groups connected only by thin threads of communications techology, such as text messaging, e-mail, cell phones, two-way pagers, and web sites, can draw together in the blink of an eye, groups of people together for a collective cause. From various parts of the world, Rheingold, has gathered stories about engineers and inventors of all sorts, working feverishly to create ever-smaller and more powerful devices that contribute to this new paradigm. In this book,Rheingold points out examples of Smart Mobs such as the swarms of demonstrators who used mobile phones, Web sites, laptops and handheld computers to coordinate their protests against the World Trade Organization in November of 1999. Rheingold shows a concern of smart mobs other than describing the weath of new communications technology that is available and coming. He is also concerned about the social, political, economic, environmental and even genetic consequences of the ever-expanding and more intrusive plethora of multidirectional communications technology. This book is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Design for Community Mini Review
Review: Howard Rheingold has impeccable timing. In the mid 80s, aware that personal computers were changing the way we think, he wrote Tools for Thought. In the early 90s, he explored how emerging digital networks were changing social groups in The Virtual Community. Twice now he's put words to important social/digital trends, years before they reach critical mass. So when Rheingold writes a book, it's a good idea to pay attention. His new book, Smart Mobs, takes a hard look at what happens when networked virtual communication goes mobile. And it's a mind-bending read. Consider for a moment that, for a good many years, personal computers sat in offices and living rooms totally disconnected from each other. It seems quaint now, but I remember that time. And if you can remember the sea change that happened in the world when all those computers (and the people behind them) got connected to the internet, you can get some inkling of the change Rheingold predicts is on its way when that same networked computational power goes mobile. We're in for another whirlwind of change in technology, and with it, a change in the way communities come together and express themselves. The book is a captivating exploration of what these new technologies are (think internet-enabled, location-aware mobile phones and PDAs) and how they're already shaping communities around the world. Howard's writing is engaging and deep, and the book is an evenhanded exploration of the new technology, both good and bad. If you want a glimpse of the virtual communities of the future, pick up his book and follow the ongoing conversation at smartmobs.com. (Reprinted from designforcommunity.com with permission.)
Rating: 
Summary: Very cool technology, very uninspired prose
Review: In Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold catalogues the technologies that are converging to change the way we live: mobile communications, social networks, distributed processing and pervasive computing. He does a good job of identifying and explaining these and predicting what it will mean when they get together. This makes for an interesting read, but I'm afraid I still found the book maddening. The worst thing is that a whole half the book is in quotes (or worse, block quotes) from other people and their dissertations or promotional materials. This makes the book lack a singular voice and is very disconcerting. Rheingold not only attributes everything to a fault, he also has the bad habit of explaining where he interviewed each person, what they ate, what funny thing the interviewee had in their office. This makes for ponderous, stalling prose that is painful to read. He also makes the Lessig-inspired mistake of dividing the world into two camps: the government and big media are lumped on one side, and heroic no-property anarchists are placed in the other. He's right to point out that big media's vested interests are a creature of government, but he doesn't get that that really isn't capitalism. A true market is the ultimate form of the mediated cooperation he pines for. If you are a techno-cultural geek, you have to read this book. But take it with a grain of salt, and brace yourself for plenty of minutiae.
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Summary: The future of games
Review: Rheingold writes from the perspective of the enthusiast. He is still trying to keep up with the kids and shares their distain for authority. I wonder if Howard ever met an anarchist he didn't like. So, we get to 'run with the pack' for a while. It seems the kids are constructing a society of self-organizing, ad-hoc networks founded on wearable wireless computers, mediated by privacy protection algorithms. Their networks are always on and location aware. The computer is mutating into a universal remote-control wand and the purpose is having fun. If it's not fun, the kids don't do it. The kids find their friends via the internet, keep in touch via cell phones and turn the city into a game board with GPS. It is all amazing and new. What does it mean? It means more "wealth, knowledge and civil society". There will be new forms of "sex, commerce, entertainment and conflict." The danger comes from the adult crowd, the 'big brother' bureaucracies that will want to redirect all this creativity into a straight-jacket. It seems the decision we have to make involves our use of the 'commons', or in modern parlance, the 'internet'. Will we allow the 'free riders' to sink the ship? Will we allow the fence builders to steal our playground? To engage in the debate, Rheingold does a good job of teaching enough chaos theory to make sense of the issues. You might get tired of him invoking the prisoner's dilemma and 'swarm intelligence', but they are interesting ideas. It's a bit thin, but the book is rushing through so many gadgets, inventors and theories that I didn't mind. Personally, I'm not sure there is anything 'new' to be invented about sex and entertainment. The most important exploration is the discovery of self. 'Sex, commerce, entertainment and conflict' may provide ever changing milestones in that journey, but I doubt our experience of despair and wonder are any different than they were 1000 years ago. Would a network of wearable computers help Hamlet make up his mind? Would Hamlet have wanted assistance? Additionally, the reader ought to be aware that the themes elucidated by Rheingold: 1) interconnectedness, 2) compression of time and 3) demassification are commonly used in defense department articles on the 'modern warrior'. It's not all fun and games.
Rating:
Summary: Keen on Smart Mobs
Review: Smart Mobs are dynamic groups of people who can act together cooperatively even if they are complete strangers. Their communication is facilitated by a new wave of wireless, mobile, portable computing devices. Howard Rheingold provokes us to foresee a future where people spontaneously interact and exchange ideas in a manner that will transform how we work, play, trade, govern, and create. Rheingold cogently explores examples of what he refers to as a "social tsunami". Special attention is given to mobile telephones which are transforming how youth exercise their social power. Teenage "thumb tribes" have developed new ways of communicating using SMS text messaging in Tokyo and Helsinki. Spontaneous groups coordinated by SMS messages had a more serious impact in the Philippines in January of 2001 when groups of protestors responding to SMS messages managed to play a primary role in overthrowing then President Joseph Estrada. Much attention is also given to networked PC's and how supercomputers, open source software and the mobile internet are facilitating social networking. Rheingold adroitly explains how these tools can be both weapons of social control and resistance. Perhaps the most provocative ideas revolve around the fact that we now have access to information about each other as never before. He explores privacy and trust issues and appears particularly concerned with surveillance web-sites, software and the electronic "bread crumb" trails that we are unaware we are leaving. Overall, Rheingold expertly weaves his experiences, interviews with experts and solid research to elucidate his interest in how human behavior will change as a result of the latest technological advances. He convincingly argues that our changing notion of community needs to be used in a beneficial manner to create a more humane and sustainable world. This book is a must read for academics, corporate types and anyone interested in how technology can promote grassroots social change.
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