With the exception of the desktop computer, that’s the way all new technology is distributed. It begins with the wealthy and influential and trickles down to the masses. In the beginning only those affluent consumers had cell phone technology and as the price of the services declined only then did the parents of those teenagers share these new devices with the youth.

Rheingold maintains that the youth are the early adopters of mobil communications. I maintain that to be fiction. The adults were the early adopters, because they had the money. They just used the phone in the same manner as alway, as phones. They provided their children with the new devices, so they could stay in contact with them.
The youth embraced the new medium because it allowed them to communicate with their peers not only in a manner foreign to teachers and parents but also in a newly created language all their own.

As Obama announced his Vice Presidential running mate, over the weekend, via text message, can we conclude that once again, the medium is the message.

Again, Rheingold presents the question, what do people gain from virtual communities that keeps them sharing information with people they might never meet face to face? Could it be the same thing that makes the young men find it easier to ask for a date via text than in person? That fear of rejection.

Rheingold establishes that blogs and virtual communities now provide the common man with a forum from which to express themselves whether they are subject knowledgeable or talented communicators.

He concludes by stating that smart mob technologies present three potential threats. The threat to liberty, quality of life, and human dignity. I would like to think that the inverse is also true. Smart mob technologies can provide us with security, improved quality of life, and elevated self-esteem

The same is true in less life-threatening situations. Drivers flash their headlights at oncoming traffic to notify others of a hiding cop, armed with radar, the communication technology used should provide the means for notifying people of approaching “danger” in a fast, easy and preferably relatively stealth way. Although the headlight blinking can suffice for this example, in other cases, such as Rheingold’s example of “free riders” notifying each other where train conductors are so they can avoid paying the fair, other means of communication must be used since the “free rider” and the person keeping the lookout are not in the same location. Calling the person may arouse suspicion as others may overhear the conversation and won’t be too happy about having to pay the fair while others get away with riding for free. That’s where text messaging comes in.

I don’t quite get people sending random “good morning” and “how are you” text messages to each other to keep in touch. Maybe because I have a very small circle of friends with whom I communicate primarily on the actual PC rather than a cell phone, but even when I don’t have access to a computer it’s just not part of my routine. Now, sending my friends tips about traffic conditions, hiding cops, or special events is different. A few months ago, TechCrunch covered a service that notifies you of nearby cops using GPS on your phone and lets you report cop “sightings” to help other drivers using the service.

Obviously this is not something that would save lives as in the case of the military coming up with a new communication concept in case of nuclear war, but it operates on the same principle of people networking together toward a common good – keeping each other out of danger, no matter the threat level. Communication technology behaves in the same way and must fulfill the same set of requirements, whether it is for military use or for use between a few friends or relatives. The only difference is that in case of civilian use, the danger level is significantly lower (in most cases).

In the introduction, he mentions his epiphany at Shibuya Crossing and describes it as “the instant recognition that a technology is going to change my life in ways I can scarcely imagine.”(p. xi) When discussing The Era of Sentient Things, Rheingold poses the question. “What kind of people will we become when we use the technology?” (p. 86)

Rheingold implies that technology is changing us. “Imagine the impact of the Rodney King video multiplied by the people power of Napster.” (p. 168)

Technology has always been one step (or more) ahead of acceptance by society, and in order to change, society has to adopt the technology. At the crossroads of this acceptance is a price to be paid. Society becomes a collective surveillant, a Big Everybody. (p.187) Rheingold states that the price to be paid will be rewarded by merchants of technology, who will provide the latest innovations in exchange for the lack of privacy.

There can be little doubt through our experience that some change has already occurred. The ability to create a three dimensional world has existed on the web since VRML 1.0 in 1996, but it didn’t come to a broader acceptance until Second Life. Online video chat was also available at that time, through C U See Me software (White Pines Software, 1997) but it was not widely adopted. Both of these examples can lead one to believe that the difference is not so much the tools as it is the network. As our connectivity increases, it appears that our willingness to abandon concern for privacy also follows suit. Consider the recent shift in blogging, where ReadWriteWeb.com announced that the future of blogging is life streaming, which affords far less privacy than a personal blog. (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_future_of_blogging_reveale.php)

The real question might be not about technology so much as it is the widespread expansion and acceptance of the network. How does the network change us, and what will we are we willing to give up in exchange for more connectivity?

Evolution experiences jumps in complexity. The internet is the most recent jump. “Smart Mobs” is essentially about mankind’s attempt to organizing this new level of complexity. The architecture of the internet makes its natural state unorganized, but we’re creating ways in which it can self organization (I’ll get to that in a bit). Before the internet we would mail things to addresses -Physical spaces. We would call people on the phone –both participants of the conversation existing in a physical space (background noise hints to their location). Now we are interacting with people in a virtual space. The people controlling the avatars do exist in a physical space, but the interactions are taking place in an entirely virtual world. The noosphere is something that exists, but we are never confronted with its existence. It is there in the background. The internet forces us to realize that the realm of human thought can exist separately from physicality’s; that the avatar is a nonexistent extension of the self. This will have a huge impact in the way we view reality. On page 17 Rheingold mentions the Finnish internet dudes who realized this dichotomy of physical and noospheric social spheres. They attempted to design an internet café where both types of interactions could occur. Goffman’s theory (about the different “faces” we present to different audiences) is a nuanced feature of our social selves that many people don’t pick up on. Now it’s a blatant fact and everyone sees it – a good example of this (on page xvi) is when the Helsinki kids are talking to the elder people and they all read a text together and giggle. There may have been bad words in that text that that kids can’t mutter around adults; multiple noospheres can, for the first time ever, exist at the same time. Children below the age of 3 do not know of a disconnected between what their own minds know and what other people’s minds know. At a certain developmental point we instinctively realize our minds are separate, but it’s never intellectualized. The forced intellectualization of this will have huge ramifications. Talking on AIM, you sometimes take on a different tongue for each message box, and you’re seeing them side by side – jumping between them. One ramification of this insight may be a drive to become a more ‘realized’ person, finding a medium between all versions of self; being more honest with who you are at a base level.

Website classifications of what you like and don’t like are the first signs of the noosphere being tracked without a human creating something (i.e. writing a book or talking on the phone) – they’re seeing their noosphere by simply interacting with the (virtual)world. More importantly however – the internet is learning about us. It’s learning that people who like band X will probably like band Y. Is it becoming a brain? Steven Johnston in Emergence says yes, but not in a ‘human brain’ kind of way. The internet has no intelligence – it doesn’t self organize as it grows, like a city. City goers section themselves naturally. The internet’s base architecture creates an inherent unorganized structure. Google was created so this horrible mess could be made sense of. Its base architecture needs to change, and the beginnings of this new architecture has already been incorporated into sites like Slashdot and Alexia (p114/122 and p118 respectively). As Johnston says “An emergent software programs that tracks associations between Web sites or audio CDs doesn’t listen to the music; it follows purchase patterns or listening habits that we supply it and lets us deal with the air guitar or off-key warbling.”

On page 5 Rheingold writes “Has the definition of ‘presence’ become uncoupled from the physical places and reassigned to a social network that extends beyond any single location.” John Paul Satre in Existentialism and Human Emotions purports the interconnectedness of all human beings is very hard to come to terms with because we are so stuck in our own physical locations. Perhaps this separation from the physical alludes to a future where we can all exist outside of separation – eventually realizing a oneness and an absolute interconnectedness. The book addresses the problem of cooperation. I believe when society is fully eloped with this technological epoch, cooperation will become easier – Rheingold mentions that when dealing with face-to-face interactions, the percentage of people cooperating goes up. People will eventually be able to see the people who their actions affect. If you spill a smoothy and then leave really quickly, the person who’s cleaning up the drink may twitter. You could read the about the dispirit you caused someone. Of course that’s a very ‘now’ way of looking at it. The human mind, and its worldview, will evolve alongside technology; we may help clean it up on principle because we feel connected with the person that has to, not because we can read their emotional aftermath.

Bit of randomness – Page 109 – Rheingold mentions Mann ability to ‘gray out’ the world and pull up colourful text (a book or his study notes perhaps). The human brain needs downtime; we need to relax every so often. Walking in a park or mindlessly watching a baseball game is healthy. If people get carried away with being ‘always on’ they may suffer creatively. Some of the world’s greatest inventions popped into minds when they were in a relaxed state.

I will say that I have to agree with Rheingold and his research, because if it’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years, and I am guilty of this myself, is that we are a society that is definitely very connected through our mobile devices. Thanks the invention of the computer and the internet, people have been able to connect themselves to the world in ways never thought possible, and that has only evolved with the development of mobile devices like cell phones and PDA’s.

What amazes me and even scares me to an extant is how early some countries have had this technology. For the past year I have been taking the mobile lab classes here at the university and have been there to hear about some of the new ideas that we are trying to develop. Now where I knew that other countries like the UK and Japan already had better devices, it was their technology that I was unaware of. I’m hear reading about other nations having already developed the new ideas, not months before us, but years.

Smart Mobs tells us about how teens and young adults in both Japan and Finland use their mobile devices to connect and locate their friends through games using GPS-like methods. It tells us about how President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines lost power through the use of text messaging. It tells us even more, but what really grabbed was how early all of this was happening. All of this was done in 2001. If all of these countries were utilizing that kind of technology in ’01, what was America doing?

When you have countries that are already
connecting their people through mobile means that early, you have to wonder where they are now, and just how far they are ahead of us here in the US. I will be the first to admit that like many others, I am as connected to my cell as they are, but am I anywhere near as connected as people in other countries. I just can’t help but wonder what the future holds for us here in the U.S. when we are consistently that behind in technology.

What amazes me and even scares me to an extant is how early some countries have had this technology. For the past year I have been taking the mobile lab classes here at the university and have been there to hear about some of the new ideas that we are trying to develop. Now where I knew that other countries like the UK and Japan already had better devices, it was their technology that I was unaware of. I’m hear reading about other nations having already developed the new ideas, not months before us, but years.

Smart Mobs tells us about how teens and young adults in both Japan and Finland use their mobile devices to connect and locate their friends through games using GPS-like methods. It tells us about how President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines lost power through the use of text messaging. It tells us even more, but what really grabbed was how early all of this was happening. All of this was done in 2001. If all of these countries were utilizing that kind of technology in ’01, what was America doing?

When you have countries that are already connecting their people through mobile means that early, you have to wonder where they are now, and just how far they are ahead of us here in the US. I will be the first to admit that like many others, I am as connected to my cell as they are, but am I anywhere near as connected as people in other countries. I just can’t help but wonder what the future holds for us here in the U.S. when we are consistently that behind in technology.

Rheingold quotes Lessig as saying that cable owners restrict Internet use in conflict with their own bottom lines (55). They keep competition out of their coaxial cables, out of the Internet they control, but how many customers understand this? And how are the high-speed ISPs blocking Web pages and servers they deem unfit? This sounds a bit unconstitutional, a bit like censoring what the masses can see, hear or read. But since it’s not the government censoring us, it’s OK, right?

Oh, but the government is getting involved. The legal requirement to digitize all broadcasts by 2009 (which is one of many postponed deadlines) will allow anyone with access to the technology to monitor, and possibly control, everything we watch.

“Every telephone call, credit card transaction, mouse-click, email, automatic bridge toll collection, convenience market video camera, and hotel room electronic key collects and broadcasts personal information that is increasingly complied, compared, sorted and stored by an unknown and possibly unknowable assortment of state security agencies and people who want to sell something” (185-186).

So, not only do we give over our information for security, which is (almost) understandable, but also for sales. How can anyone legally collect, give or sell an individual’s information without that individual’s consent? Did we get rid of the right to privacy altogether? And how long before we are billed per bit watched, bite downloaded (sites with certain amounts of traffic pay more based on an already existing – yet almost hidden – tiered billing system), transaction swiped (Mr. Teriyaki Two in Mesquite recently added a ten percent fee to pay with credit card), etc., or before some parental do-gooder actually convinces the government to pass laws limiting the number of television usage hours each household is allowed per day? It seems a bit scary that the information going out is truth (at least, for the bulk of average consumers/users) while the information coming in is more and more becoming “disinfotainment.”

So much question is this, although Rheingold does a good job of pointing out the surviellance/threat to liberty side of the argument, is there more to this than he suggests? Can tools whose invention pre-figure a military conflict be so easily adapted/co-opted for collective good? Is it simply a matter of human intentionality or policy creation as Rheingold seems to suggest. If we are at a new moment of organization characterized by “networks” will resistance to this principle come from within? or will it need to be another principle not yet conceived? Netwar just plays into the hands of those who would control the network yes?