The Times: Tech column - Flash mobs/phone locating services
By David Rowan
MAYBE ONE should not read too much into the storming of Macy's department store in New York earlier this summer by a crowd demanding "love rugs" for their "suburban commune", or the apparently spontaneous requests from hundreds of customers in a Rome bookshop for a paperback that does not exist. After all, the "flash mob" phenomenon of localised crowd stunts co-ordinated by e-mail and mobile phone - which reached Central London last week, causing brief mayhem in a sofa store is the perfect silly-season media fad that will disappear once the novelty wears off.
Yet behind these defiantly pointless instant gatherings lurks a potential social revolution that could have a huge significance for politicians, businesses and the media. More than ever before, the mobile phone, e-mail and weblogs are giving ordinary people the power to co-ordinate and mobilise themselves at extremely short notice. These ad-hoc social networks are being used to animate political campaigns, promote anti-corporate activism and report "news" otherwise missed by the mainstream media. Sofa-shop takeovers notwithstanding, the ubiquity of these technologies is slowly shifting the political balance towards electronically connected campaigners who know how to organise.
Protesters against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle four years ago co-ordinated street battles using mobile phones and instantly updated web pages. In January 2001, Joseph Estrada lost power in the Philippines after a blitz of text messages helped to bring a million demonstrators on to a Manila square. Even our own road-fuel protesters relied on text-messages, e-mails and mobile phone calls back in autumn 2000 to ensure rapid road blockages whenever tankers were seen leaving petrol depots. It's no coincidence that Howard Dean, the most technologically tuned-in of those competing to be the Democrats' candidate for US President, has vastly raised his profile using a regularly updated weblog and grassroots meetingco-ordinating websites such as MeetUp.com.
Howard Rheingold, one of the web's most creative thinkers, calls such digitally powered gatherings "smart mobs" and sees their potential as, literally, revolutionary. "Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for co-operation," he says. Imagine the impact that a "smart mob" could have on Britain's next large-scale political demonstration. The next revolution may not be televised, but it will certainly be texted and e mailed.
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MOBILE phones now have another use, which their owners might not find quite so progressive. A new range of phone-locating services has hit the marketplace, allowing other people to determine where you are through the signal your handset is generating. Carphone Warehouse has just started offering the mapAmobile service, which for £30 a year and 30p per request claims to locate people to within 50 yards "without disturbing them". It is being sold as a way of "knowing where your loved ones or colleagues are at any time", particularly to parents keen to keep track of their children.
FleetOnline, meanwhile, has also recently launched a business service that offers employers the chance to "position" their members of staff for 25p a time. Beware all you travelling salespeople who plan an extended lunch break.
Both companies state that people's phones will be tracked only after they have signalled their agreement in response to a text message, but it's easy to imagine where such freely available commercial services will lead. Sometimes there's nothing more attractive than the idea of returning to public pay phones.
(The Times, Apgust 12 2003)
MAYBE ONE should not read too much into the storming of Macy's department store in New York earlier this summer by a crowd demanding "love rugs" for their "suburban commune", or the apparently spontaneous requests from hundreds of customers in a Rome bookshop for a paperback that does not exist. After all, the "flash mob" phenomenon of localised crowd stunts co-ordinated by e-mail and mobile phone - which reached Central London last week, causing brief mayhem in a sofa store is the perfect silly-season media fad that will disappear once the novelty wears off.
Yet behind these defiantly pointless instant gatherings lurks a potential social revolution that could have a huge significance for politicians, businesses and the media. More than ever before, the mobile phone, e-mail and weblogs are giving ordinary people the power to co-ordinate and mobilise themselves at extremely short notice. These ad-hoc social networks are being used to animate political campaigns, promote anti-corporate activism and report "news" otherwise missed by the mainstream media. Sofa-shop takeovers notwithstanding, the ubiquity of these technologies is slowly shifting the political balance towards electronically connected campaigners who know how to organise.
Protesters against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle four years ago co-ordinated street battles using mobile phones and instantly updated web pages. In January 2001, Joseph Estrada lost power in the Philippines after a blitz of text messages helped to bring a million demonstrators on to a Manila square. Even our own road-fuel protesters relied on text-messages, e-mails and mobile phone calls back in autumn 2000 to ensure rapid road blockages whenever tankers were seen leaving petrol depots. It's no coincidence that Howard Dean, the most technologically tuned-in of those competing to be the Democrats' candidate for US President, has vastly raised his profile using a regularly updated weblog and grassroots meetingco-ordinating websites such as MeetUp.com.
Howard Rheingold, one of the web's most creative thinkers, calls such digitally powered gatherings "smart mobs" and sees their potential as, literally, revolutionary. "Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for co-operation," he says. Imagine the impact that a "smart mob" could have on Britain's next large-scale political demonstration. The next revolution may not be televised, but it will certainly be texted and e mailed.
++++
MOBILE phones now have another use, which their owners might not find quite so progressive. A new range of phone-locating services has hit the marketplace, allowing other people to determine where you are through the signal your handset is generating. Carphone Warehouse has just started offering the mapAmobile service, which for £30 a year and 30p per request claims to locate people to within 50 yards "without disturbing them". It is being sold as a way of "knowing where your loved ones or colleagues are at any time", particularly to parents keen to keep track of their children.
FleetOnline, meanwhile, has also recently launched a business service that offers employers the chance to "position" their members of staff for 25p a time. Beware all you travelling salespeople who plan an extended lunch break.
Both companies state that people's phones will be tracked only after they have signalled their agreement in response to a text message, but it's easy to imagine where such freely available commercial services will lead. Sometimes there's nothing more attractive than the idea of returning to public pay phones.
(The Times, Apgust 12 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Tuesday, August 12, 2003
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