Chapter 1: Mobs, People & Ideas

Cant wait to play Botfighters? Can't remember what keitai is? You've come to the right place. Follow the links below for more information from Chapter 1. Enjoy. Discuss.

1. The Society of the Spectacle

2. keitai

3. Aula

4. Helsinki Virtual Village

5. Botfighters

6. LunarStorm

7. Zavn.net

8. NTT DoCoMo

Chapter 1: Shibuya Epiphany

Mobile communication devices, peer to peer methods, and a computation-pervaded environment are making it possible for groups of people to organize collective actions on a scale never before possible -- smart mobs, for better and for worse.
- Howard Rheingold

In Chapter 1 Howard Rheingold takes the reader to Shibuyu,in Tokyo where he realizes that people are using mobile media in novel ways.

According to Rheingold "Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for cooperation" (http://www.smartmobs.com/book/book_summ.html).Through interviews with an anthropologist, a strategist behind Japans highly successful wireless Internet service, marketers, teenage texters and others Rheingold introduces us to some of the issues raised by the emergence of smart mobs and the technology that make them possible. In each section of Chapter 1 we see an example of of what smart mobs look like now and what they might look in the future.

Thumb Tribes -
In Tokyo Rheingold interviews dozens of young people on the street about mobile-texting and keitai (mobile phones) and seeks out an anthropologist Mizuko Ito who specializes in how youth use mobile phones.

" Ito believes that moblile phones triggered a trans generational power shift in Japan because they freed youth from the tyranny of the land line shared by inquisitive family members, creating a space for private communication and an agency that alters the possibilities of social action" (Rheingold, 4)
She goes on to say that the home and parents are no longer quite the regulating forces they once were and that young people through keitai now have more access to private intimate space as well as a 'right of assembly' that they simply did not have access to before such technology.
Ito and her assistant have also noted that concepts of "presence" and time have changed since over 90 percent of teenagers in Tokyo have cell phones (6). Communicating by text message is being present. Arriving on time is now included to mean arriving after the agreed hour but in contact by text.
While manufacturers are doing huge amounts of business with teenagers those same teenagers have also pushed the boundaries of what the manufacturers intended their product to be used for and turning to alternative applications and sites.

iMode Uber Alles -
One factor in the huge number of teenage cell phone users in Tokyo is the i-mode. The telecommunications company NTT DoCoMo designed, developed and marketed (and markets) the i-mode cell phone specifically for and to youth. In marketing the company hired an employee with a background in launching magazines. The result has been that cell phones have been marketed and bought as both fashion and technology.
The phones and the basic service also come at an affordable price have an easy to use interface and access to lots of lifestyle content (reservations, ringtones, fortune telling services)developed by others. They like to think of of the cell phone as a "remote control for your life" (11) instead of a phone.

Virtual Helsinki and the Botfighters of Stockholm -
In Helsinki "Different forms of mobile-enabled culture are emerging in public and in the marketplace - from Arena 2000
to Helsinki Virtual Village to Aula, from adolescent subcultures to transformations in business practice." (18)
- A group of Finns in their twenties funded by an American entrepreneur (who was looking to fund a net cafe) are are building what they call a 'shared urban living space' that is made up of " a physical location, a virtual community, a mobile social network, and a cooperative organization"(17) A year later they had 300 members.

- In Sweden a company called Its Alive created the first location-based mobile game called Botfighters which uses location sensing technologies involving mobile phones and membership at a website. How else might this be used?

- Parties are also being organized by small groups of people sending out text messages to everyone in their address book. In order to enter the party you have to show the message.

- Fare-jumpers in Stockholm are also using sms to keep each other informed about where and when train conductors are checking tickets.

Reading these examples brings to mind the question of how prevalent smart mobs are in the rest of the world.
In the United States during the WTO protests in Seattle where people used SMS, mobile phones and the Internet to organize and publicize for a political purpose. That of course is not unique, In Spain, Burma, Manila and Kosovo mobile communications technology and the Internet were used for political organization with great success.

Is smart mob technology changing and/or enabling collective behavior on a wider level? On a societal level?

Chapter 4: The Era of Sentient Things by Ralph Patterson

This is Steve Mann in 1981 wearing his computer and living as a cyborg. Hmmm? In Star Trek…yes you had to know I’d invoke those sacred words. In that movie and television series computers were ubiquitous. A person could stand in the middle of the floor and simply ask a question and it would be answered. Not only are the computers everywhere, and frequently invisible. Often sentient by Rehingold’s definition, they have the ability to ,”…sense, receive, store and transmit information.’ Of course science fiction, would do them an disservice if it didn’t give them license to reason. Excluding the occasional Klingon, planet- eating asteroid, and leaps into hyperspace there are parallel themes explored in Rehigold’s Chapter 4 of Smart Mobs The Era of Sentient Things.

My computer is a toaster, an appliance. Yours? As sophisticated as it is, it compels me to sit in front of it to find much use for it. My Blackberry has telephone and computing function, is does not restrict me to one place and is networked to as many sources as my laptop. When Scott Fisher’s (p.84) world tells me the sky is blue, will I deny myself the opportunity to think of it as azure or the color of a robins egg or link it to some personal experience even in a subtle way?

When information is everywhere will we still have the drive to discover it? In a conversation I might argue with you over such things, but in a mediated view of the world will I be less inclined to dialogue?

The push to drive technology to its maximum is a very human thing and when the outcome is beneficial, we cheer. But is there an unintended consequence lurking in the evolution to invisible computing, seamless computing ubiquitous computing? When television was brand new people would gather at store fronts to watch the phenomenon. Fifty years later there are screens and cameras everywhere including the elevator and the supermarket check out. I think sometimes we expect the world to be experienced through some form of media. Will computing that is everywhere enhance our experience of the world or will it dull our ability to sense the new? Our culture has been so accustomed to television, computing, etc. that we seek to control the world by, framing it and adjusting it to our comfort level. -end rant here-

Rheingold leads us through the implications of several theoretical and some real developments in computing that when put into play will yield a change for world culture. To each I will pose a question.
Information in Places
What benefit do you see in Scott Fisher’s tree? p84
Smart Rooms
Would modern cars qualify as “smart rooms”? Some can sense the weight difference between a child and an adult, respond automatically to cooling and heating needs, sense rain, and respond to voice command for radio and telephone. p89



Digital Cities
How will politics change to create “smart cities” where in computers are by design (building codes) employed in a network for safety and security of citizens? p99
Tangible Bits
What happens to wealth and poverty when computers can create Sutherland’s chair? P91
Wearable Computers
Taken to its logical extreme, Ismail Haritaogul’s wearable computing could translate spoken languages in near real time through wireless connections. What implications might a “universal translator” have on international politics? p93-94

With the devices we have in our hands currently , I’d say our sense of identity is altered, knowing that somewhere on the other side of the planet we can easily be known through a link or picture or blog on the Internet. Along with the power to know and be known comes the challenge to privacy and its potential for abuse. For those of us who are consumers rather than developers of technology, though usage does drive development, the power to restrain technology’s abuse is a continuing issue. I agree with Rheingold when he says the power to find the benefit of technology lies beyond the power to compute. It is linked to “…trust and willingness to risk the sucker’s payoff.” Here we are as students unadorned swapping ideas through an exchange of zeros and ones in the safety of our classroom for a larger good, a chance to discover, be corrected, perhaps validated or maybe to find Reinhold’s “sucker’s payoff”

Chapter 6: Wireless Quilts

Wireless Quilts. What are they and why are they necessary to Smart Mobs?

In short, wireless quilts, or 802.11b access points, allow Smart Mobs (mobile phones, PDA’s, laptops, etc…) the ability to wirelessly access the World Wide Web (the Internet) through “hotspots” in their homes, workspace, restaurants, parks, coffee shops, shopping malls, bookstores, movie theatres, libraries, airports, hospitals, etc.

A hotspot is nothing more then a wireless router “broadcasting” the 802.11b signal at various locations. Cities, especially New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, have been proving grounds for the effectiveness of a wireless quilt community. The general public can be sitting in a coffee shop, such as Starbucks, and surf the Internet on their phone or laptop all while drinking a cup of coffee. Furthermore, if a person’s phone is WiFi capable, they can walk down the street in most cities and access the Internet to check their email or surf the web.

Here’s the rub: WiFi setups in cities aren’t necessarily free. Most provides such as T-Zones (which are big with Starbucks locations), require the end-user to subscribe to a service, which gives them a username and password to log into the system.

Howard Rheingold, and his colleague, feel that access points or “wireless quilts” should be free to use. In fact, Howard describes in some detail how some of his associates created early versions of free access points in the early days of 802.11b-style systems.

Wireless Lans (Local Area Networks) and “ad-hoc peer-to-peer networks” , which were network system where a groups of people used their systems together to create a blanket, or quilt, of free wireless access points, were the first systems developed to broadcast the Internet wirelessly and without the need for a company to “supervise”.

The systems themselves are free. Someone needs to subscribe to the initial ISP provider, but after that initial cost, the signal can be repeated (bounced) from router to router, say in a small village community, to allow wireless access to the masses at the cost of the single ISP monthly fee.

How is this broadcasting possible? The Radio Act of 1927 allocated the radio spectrum to broadcasters through licensing, and The Communications Act of 1934 established that airways are public property, that COMMERCIAL broadcasters must acquire a license to use the airways, but the mom and pop setups only need to prove their usage is in the public's interest, convenience or necessity. Providing free wireless access to the Internet would definitely fall into the realm of public interest and convenience.


When I first began to read the chapter on Wireless Quilts, I was sitting in a Starbucks in South Jersey. I looked around the shop and noticed at least 10 laptops, two iPhones and at least 5 Blackberry's burning up the airways and I thought to myself: "Imagine how much limited productivity would be accomplished if Starbucks didn't offer WiFi?" If you think about it, besides it being the Mecca of coffee, people go there for the interactive connectivity it offers. And though its not free, its probably cheaper to setup the account and go to the hundreds of Starbucks in the city and do your online work then to pay a monthly ISP account- at least that's what some of my co-workers say. None of them pay for Internet. They surf at work, "steal" free WiFi from areas that don't password-protect their network and hop from coffee shop to coffee shop that offers free WiFi access. In many respects their living the interactive life that Colonel Dave Hughes, USA, Ret. was talking about when he and Rheingold spoke about the early days of the Internet, and especially the early days of WiFi.

Towards the end of the chapter I was stunned to find that Sony wants to WiFi chips in every TV set and PC it sells in Japan. Now this book was published in 2002, so I'm sure that in the 6 years since that we've see TV sets that are now WiFi-capable but aren't functional on account of the wireless quilt network isn't at that point yet. Amazing how even a TV will become more then its original design. Granted it will still perform its function: display audio/video media, but it won't be bound by an antenna or a cable box. No. If technology continues its course, we could see TVs that provide both broadcasting and online access through a wireless network.

Below is a YouTube video that explains the basics of a LAN network. It also discussed how to protect your network from people who would "cyber eavesdrop".

Chapter 5: The Evolution of Reputation

“Reputation Marks the Spot where Technology and Cooperation converge...”

Some of the most successful web experiences have been introduced to society have been so because of the means in which the product(s) have been able to recognize the essential elements in which reputation systems can sustain beneficial environments in their group forming network (GFN).

Before I go on with the rest of this blogpost, I gotta warn you. There was a whole boatload of theory in this chapter. I will try to gain as much background as I can find in the spirit of the "hunters and gatherers" premise introduced in the book. Where there are links in this post, you will be taken to another post that collects and fleshes out some of the theories discussed in this chapter.

In the evolution of reputation online, Reingold introduces several examples of where this idea has been recognized. What seems to be his favorite one is Ebay. Most of us know how Ebay’s history having something to do with a woman who wanted to sell her collection of Pez dispensers (sometimes the story is even with Beanie Babies.) Whatever the initial reason, Ebay has ballooned into a billion dollar system of commerce.

Reingold argues that this online system of commerce had been made successful because it meets three properties in which reputation systems much have to sustain themselves.
They are:

1. The identity of buyers and sellers must be long lived such that there is an expectation of future interaction.
2. Feedback about interactions must be available for the inspection of others.
3. People must pay enough attention to reputation ratings to base their decisions on them.

He goes on to say, “Reputation like surveillance, may induce people to police themselves.”

This seemingly basic principle has roots in some not so basic theory. This idea is an extrapolation of two previously stated laws, Reeds Law & Metcalfe’s Law.

Reingold also points out that sociologists and biologists have been testing out these principles in their own studies on human nature.
The most related sociological experiment is known as “The Prisoner’s Dilemma.”
(More on the Prisoner’s Dilemma Here… )
Reingold also introduces game theory which explores this idea of the reputation system, where economists have tested the role in which cooperation and reputation plays between individuals and their ability to self police themselves.

Game theory that is relevant to the idea of the reputation system is described within two games :
1) Ultimatum Game
2) Public Goods Game

The book goes on to stipulate that, “None of the theories and data gathered by biologists, sociologists and economists predicts what populations will do in an environment of ad hoc networks…and online reputation systems, but most of the conditions for a phase change in the scale of cooperation could be met by smart mob infrastructure: mutual monitoring, graduated sanctions, widespread dissemination of both positive and negative reputation information”

Surprisingly there is no mention of Wikipedia in the edition I had read which was published in 2002. The inception of Wikipedia was created in 2001. Wikipedia would be a good example of conversation reputation. However, it cannot apply to the rest of the chapter which focuses on reputation systems primarily focused on commerce. For another example of one that does not have a good example of following through with the reputation system is Craigslist.

Craigslist was also not mentioned in this chapter of reputation and is a good case example based on the reading as to why it is vulnerable to the issues that users of Amazon and Ebay do not experience.
It is missing many of the tenets of what makes a successful reputation system and here are the pages where the group forming system has failed its own community so much that there are forums and other standard warnings to make sure that no one gets taken advantage of.
Scam Warning: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html
Forum to gripe about scams: http://newyork.craigslist.org/forums/?forumID=9

The whole discussion in his chapter on reputation had highlighted one very important thought in the form of a question, which will be the start of our conversation on this chapter.
Rheingold recognizes that the reputation databases of seemingly secure avenues of online commerce never share their databases. Nor do they cross share their information between other systems of commerce, (i.e. Ebay cooperating with Amazon.)

He posed a very serious question with which I hope we can all discuss and continue in this blog:

“Who should own our reputations? Should people be monetizing our reputations or is this a completely acceptable notion?”

Chapter 5: Game Theory Explained

3) Game Theory Examples mentioned in Chapter 5: The Evolution of Reputation:

Ultimatum Game

“Based on Emotion where ultimately, the reputation for being a sucker is costly, and the emotional response could be an internal model that serves to regulate cheating.” (p.130)

Online Reference: http://www.altruists.org/ideas/economics/behavioral/

Public Goods Game

Public Goods Game – “Groups in which punishment was allowed resulted in more generous contributions to the common pool, but cooperation deteriorated rapidly in the absence of punishment. Even when there was no possibility of future interaction, many players punished free riders and reported that they did it because they were angry at the cheaters.”(p. 130)

Online Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goods_game

Prisoner’s Dilemma
Now I can regurgitate what was said in the book like I did with the game's above, but in my hunting and gathering ways, I have found an actual online version of this game. You should definitely check it out. :)

Online Reference: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/playground/pd.html

Chapter 5: Fuzzy Math & A Quick Dive into Theory

I'm not even going to pretend like I completely understand the equations involved when describing these laws. It is reminiscent to "A Beautiful Mind" if you ask me, but there is some really important basic fundamental principles that were required for us to understand why the reputation system is theorized to sustain itself.

The idea is extrapolated from these three theories.

a. Reeds Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed's_law

b. Metcalfe’s Law
http://www.contextmag.com/archives/199903/digitalstrategyreedslaw.asp

c. Group Forming Networks Theory
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2006/02/the_economics_o.html

Chapter 5: Online Tour Guide of "The Evolution of Reputation"

So consider this your official online tourguide of places mentioned during Chapter 5: The Evolution of Reputation. Instead of me holding an umbrella, wherever you may see mention of any of these places, keep this blog post handy and click on the names! :)

For a more information about the chapter from the author himself, please check out his official website and a philosophical summary here.

a. Ebay
b. Epinions
c. Slashdot
d. Amazon
e. Google
f. Ringo
g. Usenet
h. Tapestry
i. Grouplens
j. Alexa
k. Askme.com
l. Expertsexchange.com
m. Allexperts.com
n. Expertcentral.com
o. Abuzz.com

Welcome to Smart Mobs Group

Welcome to the Smart Mobs Group.
Instead of posting our group presentation, in the spirit of the book, we have created a blog to engage the class discussion by adding pictures and offering feeds.

If you have any suggestions or questions about this site, please email me (Elizabeth) through our blackboard system :)