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?