Flashmobbing Comes of Age:Pt 2
StumbleUponHow has flashmobbing evolved? And who has latched onto it? The second in our two-part special looks at the virtual-meets-geographical development of an ingenious SMS trend...
How has flashmobbing evolved? And why havent commercial and
non-governmental bodies latched onto it? The second in our
two-part special looks at the virtual-meets-geographical
development of an ingenious SMS trend...
By Deirdre Molloy
[ Register and post your own comments on this article below... ]
DIY innovation in the flashmob sphere snowballed in 2004. While off-kilter flashmob happenings continued to surface around Europe, Stateside things started to move in a different direction. Where they were headed was signalled in July when TxtMob, the new service from the Institute Of Applied Autonomy, was unveiled at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
Three weeks later in August, an article on Why-war.com announced their technicians had found a way to run a technologically feasible and cost-effective SMS system of their own that allowed the user to interact with specialised database that could notify them that there were events within distance of them. Location-based flashmobbing with political purpose had arrived.
In contrast to the London flashmob maestro, TxtMob developer John Henry gave the walled-garden approach to their innovation short shrift. He recognised that this system could soon be operated in any number of environments beyond the political protest sphere. But the protest milieu would be its baptismal font, and quite a debut that turned out to be.
Charge of the text brigade
Jeremy Scahill of TV news programme Democracy Now gave the first considered summation of TxtMobs impact. After an embryonic trial at the DNC, Septembers Republican National Convention (RNC) was the services first serious roadtest. As New York was blanketed by police, military and secret service agents, independent journalists and activist groups co-ordinated an audacious campaign of direct action and comprehensive news reporting via TxtMob and other messaging services to break the stranglehold on free speech.
Various groups used SMS to send out action alerts and announcements, warning protestors of roadblocks, police actions and local and international war news. They announced the whereabouts of RNC delegates which Republican senator would be coming out of what theatre/hotel/restaurant/TV studio in the next half hour. Despite almost no publicity, the [IndyMedia reporting] service received more than 2000 calls over a 4-day period, noted Scahill. For TxtMob alerts, there were over 5,500 subscribers. The police were continually a step behind as protestors suddenly swarmed from nearby shops, homes, streets and workplaces to confront senators emerging from their R&R venues.
Unquestionably the service succeeded, but compare the RNC uptake to the scope for other large gatherings with a more flashmob-savvy audience, and the potential is massive. But where are the charities, the music and arts festivals, the PR wizards of entertainment and commerce? It seems incredible that only the BBC (not normally known for rapid response commissioning in their broadcast arm) have tapped the phenomenon, and that the UKs first charity flashmob co-ordinated by Community Service Volunteers (CSV) on 17 December 2003 at Charing Cross Library has not been replicated or built-upon more creatively. If agencies offered it as a service perhaps the picture would be different, but theres not much money in it and in-house marketing and web teams have largely failed to dare.
Party people
Flashmobbing was pre-dated by the concept of the smart mob outlined by Howard Rheingold in his 2002 book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, an enquiry into the use of computer communications by campaigners. Many credit Rheingold with launching the flashmob phenomenon, and a connection of some sort cannot be denied.
Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for co-operation, wrote Rheingold. Interestingly, the author also has a fondness for the fun side of the flashmob spectrum. There is a place for meaningless action, he told the Daily Telegraph. My book showed that new technology can enable new kinds of collective action. Collective action can be political but it can also be social. It can be a party.
Elanor Taylor of the Oxford-based Social Issues Research Centre believes that we should be wary of assuming that play is never political. She quotes Mel Gooding from the preface to his Book of Surrealist Games: "We have lived far to long in the dreary region of the homus economicus, our lives shadowed by principles of self-interest, utilitarian 'necessities', instrumental moralities. But we are permitted to hope Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights. We must welcome, as did the Surrealists, the re-entry into modern life of the homo ludens, the imaginative man at play, the intuitive visionary."
Instant community
Rheingolds concept was itself pre-figured by American sci-fi author Larry Nivens coinage of the term flash crowd in a 1971 short story of the same name. In his fiction, a flash crowd happened when thousands of people teleported to the same place to witness a significant social or political event.
With advancing email and mobile phone technology, the idea of teleporting becomes ever more tangible if not quite concrete. Another more perceptive mobster Rob Zazueta of San Francisco's Flock Smart puts a different spin on the broader perspective, reflecting that flashmobbing is a way of evolving that computer social interaction back to reality.
Mobile locative media certainly affects manifestations if not the threshold of collective action. Intelligent crowds can organise spontaneous events seamlessly supported by location-based text and email services. This squares with the modernday penchant for fluid, ad hoc socialising. Emily Turrettini, author of the blog Textually.org, told Wired that TxtMob could well prove to be a crucial tool for anyone trying to organize groups of people amid rapidly evolving circumstances. "It's very useful, because most people always have their mobile phones on them," she said. "Any news, schedule change (or) meeting point can be organized and changed on the fly."
Some evidence for the phenomenons longevity can be found in the current trend of flashblogging. The mass, co-ordinated posting of comments on anothers Weblog are now frequent occurrences, and show the flashmobs tactical use of technology spreading across accessible, open source media.
Perhaps the lingering feeling that flashmobbing is a fad is fuelled by the festive hangover. But its also symptomatic of the fast evolution of communication technologies. Other innovations in mobile, web, GPRS and wi-fi will supplant text-based social congregations, offering more sophisticated and interactive options for those seeking to commune geographically by digital means. Until those projects go public, theres still mileage in the flashmob.
Read: Flashmobbing Comes Of Age: Part 1
Related links
The Institute Of Applied Autonomy
TxtMob.com
Democracy Now
IndyMedia
CSV - charity flashmob
Howard Rheingold / Smart Mobs
Social Issues Research Centre, Oxford
Flock Smart
Textually.org
[ Register and post your own comments on this article below... ]
By Deirdre Molloy
[ Register and post your own comments on this article below... ]
DIY innovation in the flashmob sphere snowballed in 2004. While off-kilter flashmob happenings continued to surface around Europe, Stateside things started to move in a different direction. Where they were headed was signalled in July when TxtMob, the new service from the Institute Of Applied Autonomy, was unveiled at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
Three weeks later in August, an article on Why-war.com announced their technicians had found a way to run a technologically feasible and cost-effective SMS system of their own that allowed the user to interact with specialised database that could notify them that there were events within distance of them. Location-based flashmobbing with political purpose had arrived.
In contrast to the London flashmob maestro, TxtMob developer John Henry gave the walled-garden approach to their innovation short shrift. He recognised that this system could soon be operated in any number of environments beyond the political protest sphere. But the protest milieu would be its baptismal font, and quite a debut that turned out to be.
Charge of the text brigade
Jeremy Scahill of TV news programme Democracy Now gave the first considered summation of TxtMobs impact. After an embryonic trial at the DNC, Septembers Republican National Convention (RNC) was the services first serious roadtest. As New York was blanketed by police, military and secret service agents, independent journalists and activist groups co-ordinated an audacious campaign of direct action and comprehensive news reporting via TxtMob and other messaging services to break the stranglehold on free speech.
Various groups used SMS to send out action alerts and announcements, warning protestors of roadblocks, police actions and local and international war news. They announced the whereabouts of RNC delegates which Republican senator would be coming out of what theatre/hotel/restaurant/TV studio in the next half hour. Despite almost no publicity, the [IndyMedia reporting] service received more than 2000 calls over a 4-day period, noted Scahill. For TxtMob alerts, there were over 5,500 subscribers. The police were continually a step behind as protestors suddenly swarmed from nearby shops, homes, streets and workplaces to confront senators emerging from their R&R venues.
Unquestionably the service succeeded, but compare the RNC uptake to the scope for other large gatherings with a more flashmob-savvy audience, and the potential is massive. But where are the charities, the music and arts festivals, the PR wizards of entertainment and commerce? It seems incredible that only the BBC (not normally known for rapid response commissioning in their broadcast arm) have tapped the phenomenon, and that the UKs first charity flashmob co-ordinated by Community Service Volunteers (CSV) on 17 December 2003 at Charing Cross Library has not been replicated or built-upon more creatively. If agencies offered it as a service perhaps the picture would be different, but theres not much money in it and in-house marketing and web teams have largely failed to dare.
Party people
Flashmobbing was pre-dated by the concept of the smart mob outlined by Howard Rheingold in his 2002 book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, an enquiry into the use of computer communications by campaigners. Many credit Rheingold with launching the flashmob phenomenon, and a connection of some sort cannot be denied.
Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for co-operation, wrote Rheingold. Interestingly, the author also has a fondness for the fun side of the flashmob spectrum. There is a place for meaningless action, he told the Daily Telegraph. My book showed that new technology can enable new kinds of collective action. Collective action can be political but it can also be social. It can be a party.
Elanor Taylor of the Oxford-based Social Issues Research Centre believes that we should be wary of assuming that play is never political. She quotes Mel Gooding from the preface to his Book of Surrealist Games: "We have lived far to long in the dreary region of the homus economicus, our lives shadowed by principles of self-interest, utilitarian 'necessities', instrumental moralities. But we are permitted to hope Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights. We must welcome, as did the Surrealists, the re-entry into modern life of the homo ludens, the imaginative man at play, the intuitive visionary."
Instant community
Rheingolds concept was itself pre-figured by American sci-fi author Larry Nivens coinage of the term flash crowd in a 1971 short story of the same name. In his fiction, a flash crowd happened when thousands of people teleported to the same place to witness a significant social or political event.
With advancing email and mobile phone technology, the idea of teleporting becomes ever more tangible if not quite concrete. Another more perceptive mobster Rob Zazueta of San Francisco's Flock Smart puts a different spin on the broader perspective, reflecting that flashmobbing is a way of evolving that computer social interaction back to reality.
Mobile locative media certainly affects manifestations if not the threshold of collective action. Intelligent crowds can organise spontaneous events seamlessly supported by location-based text and email services. This squares with the modernday penchant for fluid, ad hoc socialising. Emily Turrettini, author of the blog Textually.org, told Wired that TxtMob could well prove to be a crucial tool for anyone trying to organize groups of people amid rapidly evolving circumstances. "It's very useful, because most people always have their mobile phones on them," she said. "Any news, schedule change (or) meeting point can be organized and changed on the fly."
Some evidence for the phenomenons longevity can be found in the current trend of flashblogging. The mass, co-ordinated posting of comments on anothers Weblog are now frequent occurrences, and show the flashmobs tactical use of technology spreading across accessible, open source media.
Perhaps the lingering feeling that flashmobbing is a fad is fuelled by the festive hangover. But its also symptomatic of the fast evolution of communication technologies. Other innovations in mobile, web, GPRS and wi-fi will supplant text-based social congregations, offering more sophisticated and interactive options for those seeking to commune geographically by digital means. Until those projects go public, theres still mileage in the flashmob.
Read: Flashmobbing Comes Of Age: Part 1
Related links
The Institute Of Applied Autonomy
TxtMob.com
Democracy Now
IndyMedia
CSV - charity flashmob
Howard Rheingold / Smart Mobs
Social Issues Research Centre, Oxford
Flock Smart
Textually.org
[ Register and post your own comments on this article below... ]
Comments
mariagonzalez said:
Variant of flashmobbing - mass denial of service attacks <p>Another extension of the flashmob strategy is the mass, co-ordinated denial-of-service attacks now beginning to take off on the web. A recent one was the Chinese New year Flashmob on 9th Feb <aa419.org/flashmobs/current-mob.php> which lasted for 48 hours and targeted 8 fake bank sites and pitched itself as "a world wide online event against 419 fraud - it's 48 hours fun - it's fake banker's nightmare." <br/>Silicon.com described the online flasmob as "internet vigilantes [who] have launched a 48-hour bandwidth attack against spammers who defraud people online." Interestingly, these flashmobbers too view themselves as artists who maintain one of the world's largest databases of 419 websites, proclaiming "Fake bankers beware! The artists are coming.... Everybody is an artist!" But this incarnation of the flash mob seems more like consumer activism, Watchdog with teeth, collectively savaging rogue IP addresses to salvage trust in a scam-ridden web. <br/></p>
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