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Important Ideas from Smart Mobs

In an interview Howard Rheingold stated his definition of a smart mob as: "A smart mob is really about a social practice of a group of people who are enabled by an emerging technology" (Greenlee, 2003). He goes onto say how people are beginning to use mobile communications and the Internet "to mobilize and coordinate their collective actions in the real world" (Greenlee, 2003). Rheingold's book focuses on a few key aspects, some of which are; text messaging "thumb tribes", collective action through peer to peer communication, and cooperation and flocking behavior.

Tokyo's texting obsession was a great revelation to Rheingold. He saw in these young Japanese citizens, the future of our world, as he witnessed thousands of people staring into their phones, sending messages to one another without ever speaking into the mouthpiece. It is like instant messaging for your mobile phone. People are now able to keep in constant contact with each other, texting multiple times throughout their day about whatever they may be doing. Rheingold mentions how people can now communicate with one another at times when they may not have been able to before, such as during school classes. This continuous contact and communication has created a different sort of closeness and community among people in the text message society. Texting and email reachable on cell phones will certainly make communicating easier and more prevalent, as people will be able to check their email much more than in earlier years.

Collective action through technology is mentioned in Smart Mobs, as well as in Future Active, by Graham Meikle. Both books convey situations where groups of people have come together to rally for and against certain political and social issues. These groups came together using technological aspects; such as text messaging, email, Internet websites, and other forms of communication. Virtual sit-ins and mass emails were mentioned in Future Active, and viral text messaging against Philippine government corruption was mentioned in Smart Mobs. The use of technology to communicate and gather has been increasing through the years, and with the technological advances expected in the coming years, it can only increase more. Email is still a great way to spread information and gather support for issues. Old Dominion uses their email system to inform its students about daily announcements and events at the university. It is also a way for students and faculty to interact outside of the classroom setting. Email was used specifically for this project as a way to communicate between group members, arrange meetings outside of class, and collaborate and share information about the assignment.

In his book, Rheingold recalls a story about a group of people at a conference for computer graphics. These people were put into a room and shown a screen depicting live feed of the audience themselves. They were then asked to hold up paddles displaying a different color for each side of the room. After a few words of coaching, the audience began to play a virtual game of pong with each other, switching their paddle color respectively in order to create the correct affect. These people were able to cooperate and create these virtual images with only a few suggestions by the conference leader, exemplifying a type of self-conscious flocking behavior. They flocked together and became a working unit, even though they were not led by any single person. No one took control, they just all "flocked" together and cooperated with an underlying level of understanding. Email systems can somewhat display this type of self-cooperative behavior. People who attend ODU and receive an email account have access to a lot of different facilities. Most teachers will supply their classes with an email address of where they can be reached, and a lot of pages on the website also offer email addresses of those who created and support each page. Without any prompting, a student who seeks information can email any address and attempt to retrieve it. The receiver replies back to the student either with the information, or with instructions on where to receive the information. All of this is done without any sort of instruction or coaching. People are just supplied the tools; an email account and others' email addresses, and then they cooperate with each other to complete certain tasks.


International/Intercultural Dimensions of Smart Mobs

In the book Smart Mobs, by Howard Rheingold, the issue of technology in foreign countries is frequently discussed. The book begins with explanations of the expanding technologies in Tokyo, as well as other places. Email is a widely used technology all over the world. Its sister technology, text messaging, has become popular, not only in the United States, but in foreign nations as well. Due to the wide international use of email, the updating of ODU's email system could do nothing but better its use by people from other nations. By making the email system easier to use, everyone at Old Dominion University will benefit. The ease of a newer email system will help those faculty and students who may not speak English as their first language, will find the system easier to navigate. When people are faced with a problem concerning ODU's email, then they must go through a chain of instructions on how to fix it. These instructions are sometimes confusing and are all written in English. By eliminating these problems and difficulties from the beginning, less people will have to seek out these instructions.

Smart Mobs focuses a lot of attention on international and intercultural issues concerning technology. Technology, in fact, remains one of the only barriers of nation and culture that everyone is still freely able to cross. It is a way for people all over the world to communicate. While email is used internationally and does break former barriers on communication, improving email systems only increases this communication and decreases segregation among nations. Our email solutions attempt to decrease these problems, therefore furthering communication between our university, our nation, and all other nations around the world.

Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Nest Social Revolution. Perseus Publishing: Cambridge, MA. 2003.