Smart Mobs: The Power of the Mobile Many

Smart Mobs: the power of the mobile many
Howard Rheingold

This article basically discusses the idea of the ‘Smart Mob’ and the ‘swarming’ and ‘netwar’ which eventuates from the Smart Mob phenomenon. As Rheingold writes ‘Smart Mobs consist if people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know each other. The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities’ (p 191) and continues on to say that ‘they enable people to act together in new ways and in situations where collective action was not possible before’

Discusses the idea that via mobile technology people can form ‘groups’ or ‘swarms’ as he coins it in the article, primarily for the purpose of making a statement or making something happen, for example for a political protest. For example to give a recent example of SmartMobbing is probably the Cronulla Riots in which text messages were sent out telling people to ‘reclaim the beach.’ Text messaging was cited for helping to incite the 2005 Cronulla riots. The SMS messages assisted in mobilising about 5,000 white Australians to engage in violence against those of Middle Eastern origin. In response, some Australians have called for the use of text messaging (or any other electronic means) to incite a riot to be treated as an aggravating circumstance, and thus punished more harshly than other forms of incitement.

Rheingold labells the current generation ‘Generation Txt’ with one of the key points throughout the article is the idea of ‘Non violent political swarming’ and he gives the example of Joseph Estrada who was the President of the Philippines until is resignation in January 2001. It is widely believed that his resignation was in the wake of a campaign against him which was coordinated with SMS chain messages. As Rheingold writes ‘Bringing down a government without firing a shot was a momentous early eruption of smart mob behaviour.’

Rheingold discusses the emergence of ‘netwar,’ where he quotes from John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt who coined the term ‘netwar’ to mean:
‘Netwar is an emerging mode of conflict in which the protagonists- ranging from terrorists and criminal organisations on the dark side to militant social activists on the bright side- use network forms of organisation, doctrine, strategy and technology attuned to the information age.. These networks are proving very hard to deal with; some are winning. What all have in common is that they operate in small, dispersed units that can deploy nimbly- anywhere, anytime.’ (p. 194)

If you were interested the National Securities and Research Division of RAND published a Monograph Report entitled ‘The Advent of Netwar’ which basically says that the information revolution is leading to the rise of network forms of organization, with unusual implications for how societies are organized and conflicts are conducted. "Netwar" is an emerging consequence. They define the term by saying, ‘the term refers to societal conflict and crime, short of war, in which the antagonists are organized more as sprawling "leaderless" networks than as tight-knit hierarchies.’ Many terrorists, criminals, fundamentalists, and ethno-nationalists are developing netwar capabilities. A new generation of revolutionaries and militant radicals is also emerging, with new doctrines, strategies, and technologies that support their reliance on network forms of organization. Netwar may be the dominant mode of societal conflict in the 21st century. The emergence of netwar raises the need to rethink strategy and doctrine to conduct counternetwar. Traditional notions of war and low-intensity conflict as a sequential process based on massing, manoeuvring, and fighting will likely prove inadequate to cope with nonlinear, swarm-like, information-age conflicts in which societal and military elements are closely intermingled.’

Netwar and ‘Smartmobs’ introduce the idea of ‘nonlinear conflict’ and the idea of ‘networks.’ As Rheingold writes, ‘networks constitute the newest major social organisational form, after tribes, hierarchies and markets.’ (p. 194)