The Power of "Mob Technology"

Howard Rheingold discusses how many mobile phones were used to overthrow governments between the 1990s as well as part of the early 2000s. This occurred in more than one country as Rheingold talks about. Rheingold touches on the “People Power II” demonstrations that took place in 2001 in the Philippines. The people of this country used text messages to spread jokes and rumors which turned to be very political. This particular form of communication made it possible to actually deteriorate and prove the people’s dislike towards the then current President Estrada. Through text messages they began to protest against the stop of the impeachment of Estrada. Over four days, more than a million people showed up just by hearing about it through text messages. As Rheingold points out this began the hallmark of early smart mob technology.

This reminds me a lot of what happened in Egypt recently. On January 25^th, protests started off in Egypt, which was inspired by other protests such as the one that was successful in Tunisia. These protests were the first to take place on this type of level since the 1970s. In response to this the government blocked certain social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Since many of the protesters found other ways around using Facebook and Twitter, the government actually had to block all internet services in the country, including texting. However after reading all of this did they really think it would make things better? Governments turn to these social networking sites and blocking them as if they are a privilege to use, however as seen in Egypt it only makes the people more upset and want to protest and go against the Government even more. This makes me wonder what would happen if something like this occurred in the United States, considering the fact that Twitter and Facebook originated in the U.S.