Forget sharp suits, Italian-inflected Noo Yawk accents and lightning machine-gun hits. In the digital sphere, 'the mob' comes equipped with friendship bracelets and mobile phones.
Welcome to the world of the 'smart mob', where the network entwines with the maverick spirit of hippiedom. Connected by e-mail and mobile phones, devotees converge at a predetermined moment and stage an event or protest.
To accentuate the drama and prevent intervention by the authorities, the place and 'script' remain secret until just before the mob comes together. Since last year, when techno-prophet Howard Rheingold delivered the definitive book on the subject, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, the technology-enabled collective action that he foresaw has been breaking out across the globe.
In Korea, Mr Rheingold told Technopedia, the young cyber-generation used the OhMyNews.com website and text messaging to mastermind a campaign that swung the election in favour of President Roh Moo-hyun. In America, while the Howard Dean presidential campaign has exploited the internet and mobile phones in a grassroots movement, the left-wing activist site moveon.org has turned into a 'formidable' popular cohesive force.
Likewise, the global antiwar protests in the run-up to America's attack on Iraq could never have been organised on such a scale and at such a pace without the self-organising capabilities that websites, weblogs, e-mail and text messaging allow, Mr Rheingold claims.
Also known as a 'flash crowd', the phenomenon he chronicles can be traced back to a 1973 science-fiction short story by Larry Niven. In the story, teleportation is routine and 'flash crowd' means the ghoulish mob that abruptly teleports to places in turmoil.
