Technological Forecasting & Social Change

71 (2004) 651 – 652

Book review

Smart Mobs. The Next Social Revolution

Howard Rheingold, Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2002, xxii & 266 pp. ISBN: 0-7382-
0608-3 (hc.); 0-7382-0861-2 (pbk.)

In this fascinating piece of speculation, a ‘‘Smart Mob’’ is Howard Rheingold’s shorthand

for a ‘‘mobile ad hoc social network.’’ Rheingold says he had a ‘‘Eureka moment’’ about such
networks on the streets of Tokyo when he observed crowds of young people silently texting
on their cellphones. Later, it became much clearer when the street demonstrators at the 1999
anti-WTO protests used dynamically updated websites, cellphones, and ‘swarming’ tactics in
the battle of Seattle, and when texting played a critical role in quickly assembling over a
million black-clad protestors who, over the space of 4 days, caused President Joseph Estrada
to fall in the Philippines. It was evident that groups of people, most of whom did not know
each other, were cooperating in ways that had never been possible because they had mobile
devices that enabled them to communicate and compute in real time, to cooperate and to
adjust their behavior accordingly. In the same vein, the lusty young ladies of St. Andrews
University have a text messaging network that enables them to ‘‘swarm’’ to wherever Prince
William might be. In short, the Internet and mobile communications have merged into real-
time connectivity that enables groups to form and respond to changing situations quickly,
collaboratively, and nonhierarchically. There is a new Critical Mass phenomenon, as when
groups of bicyclists converge to clog streets and traffic in Washington, DC, or San Francisco,
or when Howard Dean’s campaign was able to quickly organize large numbers of enthusiastic
young supporters and raise US$40 million in campaign money and become an early leader in
the race to become the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.
Why has this new phenomenon emerged and what are its consequences likely to be?
Rheingold argues that the continuing validity of Moore’s Law, the doubling of microchip
capabilities every 18 months, has been accompanied by a radical shift in communications
potentials. In the early development of radio and television, Sarnoff’s Law held: the value of a
broadcast network is proportional to the number of listeners (n). As the Internet emerged, this
gave way to Metcalfe’s Law: the total value of a network where each node can reach every
other node grows with the square of the number of nodes (n2). However, as the World Wide
Web has evolved and mobile communications have multiplied the ability to create GFNs
(group-forming networks), Reed’s Law, the link between computers and social networks, has
taken over: the value of networks is now growing not proportionately to n2 but exponentially
(2n). As a result, the pressures to further develop communications and computer networks and
the emergence of new forms of social networks are, Rheingold asserts, in a positive feedback

doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2004.02.002
652 Book review

loop, with consequences for social and political life that are likely to be profound but as yet
are only dimly perceived.
The potentials exist because the Web is a global commons, a public good available to all,
and because weblogging software is permitting continual access to location-/time-relevant
blogs that in turn permit the emergence of self-organizing and self-governing forms of
collective action. Distinctive features of the resulting swarm systems are the absence of
imposed centralized control, the autonomous nature of subunits, the high connectivity between
the subunits, and the nonlinear causality of peers influencing peers. These characteristics
could, Rheingold says, result in a social cornucopia of the commons. However, whether or not
this will be realized depends on whether or not those who control existing infrastructures and
corporations are able to privatize parts of the commons and to control the direction of change
by excluding innovators and imposing their own rules—and transactions-based systems. He
asks: ‘‘Will self-organized, ad hoc networks of computer wearers, mediated by privacy-
protecting agents, blossom into a renaissance of new wealth, knowledge, and revitalized civil
society, or will the same technological–social regime provide nothing more than yet another
revenue stream for Disinfotainment?’’ (p. 181). To answer this question, he argues that we
need more information about effects on three levels: that of the individual personality, where
cognitive and identity-related issues emerge; that of the immediate social network and
neighborhood, where place- and community-related issues emerge; and that of the society,
where emergent effects of individual usage may influence the zeitgeist, values, and/or power
structure of an entire polity, culture, or civilization. He also cautions that there is a potential
downside to the rapidly developing technology (p. 185): ‘‘Threats to liberty: Pervasive
computing is converging with ubiquitous surveillance, providing the totalitarian snoop power
depicted in Orwell’s 1984. Threats to quality of life: From individual angst to deteriorating
communities, it isn’t clear whether life in the infomated society delivers convenience faster
than it erodes sanity and civility. Threats to human dignity: As more people turn more aspects
of their lives over to symbiotic interaction with machines, the more mechanical and less
humane we become.’’ Technological change is leading us into uncharted territory. Rheingold
concludes (p. 202) that before anyone can make intelligent decisions about what to do with
smart mob technologies, more people need more reliable, practical knowledge about how to
regulate the mobile Internet in ways that free innovation and promote competition without
undermining the foundations of democratic societies. The danger is that over the next few
years, nascent smart mobs will be neutralized into passive consumers of another centrally
controlled mass medium, rather than realizing the many social benefits of a fundamentally new
form of connectivity and cooperative action.

Brian J.L. Berry

School of Social Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas,
Box 830688 MS GR31, Richardson, TX 75083-0688, USA
E-mail address: brian.berry@utdallas.edu
Fax: +1-972-883-2735

19 February 2004