mobster

My housemate Sean, who has become one of the voices of the recent 'flash mob' craze via his coverage on flashmobs.com was quoted in today's Chicago Tribune: All in a flash: Meet, mob and move on (requires login, you may use akuakusf as both user and password).

I've had mixed feelings about this recent interest in flash mobbing. From one point of view I like the idea of smart mob behavior mediated through technology which is how it was first presented to me, but upon inspection it turns out that technology plays very little role in these events. From another point of view I appreciate the situationist humor of the gatherings. This sort of thing coincides nicely with the Cacophony Society events that I love so dearly. Again though, on closer inspection the flash mob events so far pale in comparison, seeming more like a watered down knock-off that's been homogenized for the masses.

The best thing about these events are the 'flash' part which they do adhere to nicely. The mobs appear in the target location with relative suddenness, stay for only a minute or two, and then disperse just as quickly. I do like that.

Last night over dinner at Sam Wo Restaurant in Chinatown, Sean and I discussed plans for a San Francisco flash mob event he wants to hold. This one will add in some of the cacophony flavor, but still no facilitation via technology.

What I'd like to see is a smart mob enabled with wireless communication devices. I suppose the device distribution should be at least 1 per 5 participants. This will allow the mob to be coordinated on-the-fly in real time during an event, or even the spontaneous creation of an event (you get a message on your device that says "If you're near Union Square right now and wish to participate in a mob event...."). Anyone in the network could suggest/control an event. Sean suggested also having a reputation system to filter whom you will receive participation requests from. This is a good idea, as some people may be more interested in politically-minded mob events (of a certain bent even) and others may be more interested in the more absurdist flash mobs.

It sounds like a lot of effort for a silly thing, but silly things make life worth living.

Comments

[sean]

PLEASE NOTE: For the record, the first San Francisco flash mob idea was -not- my idea, I had nothing to do with it, and beyond a few brief e-mail exchanges this week I don't know the people who though it up. The spinning idea was not what Dav referred to above when he recounted our discussion at Sam Wo.

Dav, I -think- I know what you're saying in "I appreciate the situationist humor of the gatherings." Sort of. But what bugs me about the situationist thing is that what I've seen of it was couched in all this very esoteric, academic language, the kind of language designed to confuse rather than to communicate. I have the feeling that too many of the people who got Situationism going were making it the foundation of their doctoral theses or something. Then again, maybe I'm missing something because I haven't had the patience to read through much of that stuff. I love some of the Situationist gags and games that I heard and read about in college, but I don't think I'd want to read -accounts- of those gags and games written by actual Situationists...

I disagree that tech plays little role here; e-mail and weblogs play a tremendous role. That's how you quickly gather specific participation that cuts across a wide swath of society without involving big corporations or the big government. I think you're lamenting the fact that this is nothing compared to what this will become. Once widespread, cheap, location-aware networked devices come into the picture these sorts of events will grow into something that you'll never mistake for old-school pranks; events whose dependence on technology you won't overlook. This has all been written about before but it's good to see it starting to come together.

[Dav]

You and I both have been discussing this over the last few weeks and using the term situationist freely, now suddenly you want to take some sort of anti-intellectual stance against Situationism like some sort of blue collar man-of-the-people, Mr. UC Berkeley Grad Student?

And I stand by the fact that tech plays very little role so far. It is obvious from the context of my comment, since I give examples of how tech could play more of a role, that I am talking about technology being used during and immediately preceding the event. In that aspect, there is no technology role whatsoever so far, other than synchronized time keeping devices. Assuming this phenomenon continues to grow and evolve, I am confident that history will prove me right relative to the role technology will play scant years from now.

[jim]

with the talk of flash-mobbing and its relation to tech I had a vision: Suddenly a mob appears, they stand around being harmless. Nearly at once all of their cell phones start ringing. Is it because they planned for someone to call them at this exact time? Or are they all calling each other? Will it overload the local cell circuits? If the circuits are overloaded, will they just make their phone make the ring noise to add to the cacophony, or would that be posing? How long should one talk on the phone after receiving the call?

It really doesn't have anything to do with coordination, but it would be wacky.

Of course, everyone could use their phone text message email address to subscribe to a mailing list, which could then be used to direct the herd, er, mob. Mooo.