Smart mob

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Smart Mob stands in German for a form of flash mob with a political, social or ideological message. This form of organization of protests, which has been common among critics of globalization for a number of years, describes a brief, seemingly spontaneous crowd of people in public or semi-public places. The term was introduced by Howard Rheingold in his book of the same name and referred to a form of self-structuring of social organization through technology-mediated, intelligent emergent behavior.

overview

The concept was introduced by Howard Rheingold in his book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution . According to Rheingold, smart mobs are an indication of the development of communication technologies.

These growing technologies include the Internet, computer-mediated communications such as Internet Relay Chat, and wireless devices such as cell phones and personal digital assistants. Methods like peer-to-peer networking and pervasive computing are changing the way people organize and share information. A smart mob is a group that, contrary to the usual connotations of a mob, behaves intelligently and efficiently because it connects an exponentially growing network. One reason for the rise in smart mobs is the ever-decreasing cost of the increasingly powerful microprocessors.

The appearance of such interaction phenomena in complex, non-linear systems is called emergence. Hakim Bey calls these forms of action Temporary Autonomous Zone .

A technical variant is the radio ballet , a form of street protest or deliberate irritation of passers-by, first performed in Hamburg in 2002 . The actors carry a radio with them and are given instructions on how to behave. For example, the participants are asked to wave, dance, stoop around or lie down on the floor.

Examples

In 2001, smart mobs contributed to the overthrow of the suspected corruption president Joseph Estrada in Manila - wherever the unpopular politician appeared, smart mobbers quickly organized demonstrations . Almost an hour after the latest news about corruption was spread, an SMS message was forwarded: ( Go 2EDSA, Wear black ). Thousands of protesters dressed in black appeared in public places.

On September 8, 2007, a nationwide smart mob against rail privatization took place. In more than 50 cities, more than 2000 people took part, announced the Alliance Rail for All .

In January 2008 there was a software error at a gas station in Iserlohn that made a liter of fuel cost three cents. The customers immediately informed friends and acquaintances that the gas station suffered a loss of more than 10,000 euros.

At the Critical Mass , cyclists meet for joint rides to show their presence on the road.

Since 2013, a smart mob called "Care on the ground" has taken place regularly on the 2nd Saturday of the month in all major German cities. The aim of this campaign is to make politics and society aware of the shortcomings of the current care situation in Germany and to bring about a reform of care policy that improves the situation for carers, carers and relatives in the long term.

reception

Warren Ellis wrote a twelve-part comic series for Wildstorm called Global Frequency . In this he describes a clandestine non-governmental organization based on the concept of the smart mob. Even the pilot for a television series was shot.

See also

literature

  • Julia Jochem: Performance 2.0 - On the media history of flash mobs. vwh Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3940317988 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Clive Thompson: The Year in Ideas, Smart Mobs. The New York Times December 15, 2002, accessed February 18, 2008
  2. ↑ Mao dances ballet ( Memento of the original from May 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Wanda Wieczorek, May 7, 2002, accessed August 26, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.glizz.net
  3. ↑ With noise against rail privatization ( Memento of the original from May 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on live-pr.com, Associated Press, September 8, 2007 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.live-pr.com
  4. ↑ Stefan Janke and Bülend Ürük: Nocturnal state of emergency at BFT petrol station on derwesten.de, Waz media group, January 11, 2008
  5. ↑ http://www.pflege-am-boden.de/index.html