Rheingold
I found the article by Howard Rheingold to be very complex, but still pretty interesting. He focuses on the emergence of a new, self-sustaining social structure called a Smart Mob. These are created on the grassroots level by people who have the technological power to network with other grassroots individuals to help advance a cause. One example is how protesters at the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle coordinated their protests around the entire city, using everyday technologies. People used Palm Pilots to provide real-time protesting information to others in the Seattle area by uploading maps, photos, and whereabouts of police activity to the internet, where others participating in the events could then protest in the areas less-covered by police. Cell phones and SMS were widely used, and it resulted in what analysts have said was a victory for the protesters.
But while Rheingold praises all this new technology and how it is changing peer-to-peer communications, he says we must not forget that what can be used for good, can also be used for bad. Rebels in Chechnya and Colombia have also used "netwar strategy" to advance their own causes.
Overall, in my opinion Rheingold's perception of the changes being brought on by new and inexpensive communication technologies is a little embellished, but not far off from reality. I think the greatest change will be "peer-to-peer" journalism, which the book describes as "Rodney King video meets the power of Napster." Changes in this direction are already taking place, with the sudden rise in popularity of YouTube being one example. Basically, this article was long and too often combined fantasy with predictions of what the future holds for us.
But while Rheingold praises all this new technology and how it is changing peer-to-peer communications, he says we must not forget that what can be used for good, can also be used for bad. Rebels in Chechnya and Colombia have also used "netwar strategy" to advance their own causes.
Overall, in my opinion Rheingold's perception of the changes being brought on by new and inexpensive communication technologies is a little embellished, but not far off from reality. I think the greatest change will be "peer-to-peer" journalism, which the book describes as "Rodney King video meets the power of Napster." Changes in this direction are already taking place, with the sudden rise in popularity of YouTube being one example. Basically, this article was long and too often combined fantasy with predictions of what the future holds for us.
posted by Mike at 1:02 PM
8 Comments:
I agree that this article was too long. I think the whole article was really futuristic anyway though. It is pretty cool that you can recieve text messages about suspected terrorist attacks and make plans accordingly. I also like the tracking device I suppose you could call it. I thought that was pretty interesting that you could meet people if you were in an area and have lunch with them even if you didn't know they exsisted with just the touch of a button. I don't know. I think the future can hold some pretty crazy stuff.
this is a good point because the world and its technologies really are changing a great deal. I like how you pointed out that what can be used for good can also be used for bad, because that's true also.
I thought that this article was a very nice read. The part talking about how the fillipino people do not have landlines so they all use cell phones astonished me. I also did not know that text messaging had been around since before 2000. I also enjoyed the new advancements that the Japanese are making in the creation of SMS devices.
I agree with the length of the article it was way too long. I also think that the p2p journals will provide major changes. I never thought that text messaging could do so much...it overthrew a president, that alone shows the power of the people.
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I agree that some of Rheingold's predicitions were a little bit far off. Some of them could probably become reality but im not so sure about others.
The article was interesting about how the people would use text messaging and others sorts of communication to gather rallies together and how quickly it could happen. I never heard of such things happening before so it was something new to me.
I think that they way they orginized these evnets with text messaging in brilliant. I suprised that more things have not happend like that in the US for rallies or what not during political campaines or protests to get more people involved.
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