Smart Revolutions

Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs is a novel that discusses the power new technologies have had in organizing revolutions and overthrows. The smart mobs, he writes, are a network of people, operating through technologies such as computers, cell phones and other mobile devices. The efforts of these people can be both social and political. In the beginning of the chapter he writes of the Filipino takedown of President Joseph Estrada in 2001. This type of political influence has been felt over the last twenty years and has had remarkable results. Just this past year we have seen social revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Libya. Rheingold’s chapter defines a “network” as including nodes and links, using many possible paths to distribute information from any link to any other. This book was written almost ten years ago and was a precursor to the revolts we see today. These developing technologies are connecting people and orchestrating these revolts. Media theorist Clay Shirky commented on the recent “Twitter Revolution” in Tunisia. Shirky said that, “no one claims social media makes people angry enough to act [but] it helps angry people coordinate their actions.” Indeed these new forms of technologies lead to “smart mobs,” or coordination that was never before possible. In the case of Egypt it took thirty years for the people to overthrow Hosni Mubarak. This is mainly attributed to the overwhelming rallies, coordinated by digital technology. As Rheingold detailed, the network-structured communications hold great potential for enabling democratic forms of decision-making and collective action.

Posted by: Mike Anderson