Summary: Rheingold "Smart Mobs"

Howard Rheingold starts off this interesting article by talking about the overthrow of Filipino President Joseph Estrada in 2001 by a smart mob. Concerned citizens sent text messages to people telling them to meet a certain avenue wearing black. More than a million citizens showed up eventually leading to the overthrow of the president. Appropriately named "generation text", people converged together and made a change through technology. However, text messaging was prevalent amongst filipinos even before the overthrow of Estrada, dating back to 1995 (SMS).

Professor Vicente Rafael of the University of California in San Diego makes an interesting point that while Filipinos are technologically updated in communication, other aspects of life in the Phillippines are deteriorating; much like the government, overrun by corruption. In the instance of the overthrow of Estrada, Rheingold says that the crowd became a medium, furthermore they became the actual technology,sending the message so quickly to each other.He talks about netwar being both violent or non-violent. The term netwar was coined by John Arguilla and David Ronfeldt. The term describes the paradoxical differences of the uses of networking (the bright and dark sides). Netwar is commonly used, even by the U.S. military.

Alexis de Tocqueville made an interesting point about 19th century Americans concerning information exchange. The most informed share new information with the public. at first out of duty, but eventually by choice, becoming a routine for the benefit of all. This could be said about smart mobs and peer to peer journalism. Smart mobs can bring people together with similar interests, some even alerting you when someone is in your vicinity at the moment (lovegety, imahima, match making services), while others like Upoc, based in Manhattan, served as an effective communicator during the attacks of 9/11. Consequently, this is what information exchange has become about, in order to share knowledge with others for the benefit of all.