Flash mob

the art of meaninglessness?

Flash mob

definitionshistory

types of flash mobrelated concepts

technology

A flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse.    The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.

Inventor of flash mob is Bill Wasik, senior editor of Harper's Magazine. The concept's creator, a shadowy figure known only as Bill, started off by e-mailing 50 friends to gather at a retail store in downtown Manhattan.  More than 100 people converged upon the ninth floor rug department of the store, gathering around and asking for a "love rig".   

"It's a spectacle for spectacle's sake - which is silly, but is also, as I've discovered somewhat to my surprise, genuinely transgressive, which is part of its appeal, I think," said the mysterious Bill in an e-mail exchange. "People feel like there's nothing but order everywhere, and so they love to be a part of just one thing that nobody was expecting."(Bill)

First Flash mob

The term flash mob is inspired by "smart mob"   A smart mob is a group that, contrary to the usual connotations of a mob, behaves intelligently or efficiently. People to connect to information and others, allowing a form of social coordination via:

Internet Relay Chatmobile phones and  digital assistants. 

    Depending on how the technology is used, smart mobs may be beneficial or detrimental to society.

Examples of smart mob

eBay — a collection of users who are empowered by the Internet and eBay to buy and sell and maintain the quality control over all transactions through the rating system.

 Text messages that were sent in the Philippines, which are thought to be partly responsible for the demonstration that ousted former President Joseph Estrada. 

 The 2007 Lawyers' Movement in Pakistan, a mob with a very specific agenda, moving quickly dismantling law and order throughout the country. The 'handlers' or dispatchers were members of a group formerly known as Blackwater, and currently known as Xe Worldwide, in conjunction with the U.S. Embassy.

 

Common types of Flash mob

A flash mob bang  is a type of flash mob where a group of people meet in a specified area pretend to shoot each other with their fingers until everyone but one is on the ground. The trend owes much to uses of modern communications technologies, including decentralised personal networking, known as smart mobbing.

Common types of Flash mob Participating cities included Atlanta, Boston, Budapest, Chicago,Copenhagen, Denver, Dublin, Houston, Huntsville, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York City, Paris, Pécs, Portland, Roanoke, Seattle, Shanghai, Stockholm, Sydney, Székesfehérvár, Szombathely, Vancouver, Washington, DC and Zurich

Worldwide Pillow Fight Day   It was a pillow fight flash mob that took place on March 22, 2008. Over 25 cities around the globe participated in the first "international flash mob", which was the world's largest flash mob to date. 

Common types of Flash mob

Silent disco  People gathere with their portable music devices, and at a set time began dancing to their music.  In 2006, it was reported that more than 4,000 people participated at London Victoria station. This impacted the regular service of the system enough for the city's police to begin crowd control and slowly clear people.

Flash mob violence

In Philadelphia the local mobs involve mainly middle- and high-schoolers.

As many as 2,000 teenagers thronged the narrow sidewalks, blocked traffic, jumped on cars and roughed up bystanders. There were three arrests and multiple assaults, and many stores and restaurants closed early amid fears of trouble brewing. Police monitors social networking sitesand message boards for early warning of potential disturbances.

"It's easy to do; it's thrilling, it's fun, and they can turn on the TV the next day and say, 'I was there."

Police being silly.

Belarus, a flash mob of citizens met in the central square and simultaneously ate ice cream.  The government’s rules prohibited group public actions. The protesters brought their cameras and filmed black clad security forces apprehending them in October Square.  The mission didn’t bring down the government since the protesters overestimated how enraged citizens outside Belarus would at this action, but they did make the government look foolish.

The governments being even sillier.

Governments do the campaign against word-of-mouth via word-of-mouth.

“There’s been a lot of media coverage about organized mobs intimidating lawmakers, disrupting town halls, and silencing real discussion about the need for real health insurance reform.The truth is, it’s a sham. These “grassroots protests” are being organized and largely paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies who are desperate to block reform. They’re trying to use lies and fear to break the President and his agenda for change."

Jen O’Malley DillonExecutive DirectorDemocratic National Committee

Related concepts. Collective inteligence.

Collective intelegence relates to smart mobs and to any flash mob coordination.

Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals. Collective intelligence appears in a wide variety of forms of consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans, and computer networks.

Collective intelligence is enabled by the rise of  Web 2.0. Users are able to generate their own content.  According to Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, collective intelligence is mass collaboration. In order for this concept to happen, four principles need to exist. These are openness, peering, sharing and acting globally.

Related concepts. Culture Jamming.

Culture jamming is a different way to look at common things. Using mass culture and create awareness.

Culture jams re-figure logos, fashion statements, and product images to challenge the idea of "what's cool," along with assumptions about the personal freedoms of consumption.  Culture jamming is usually employed in opposition to a perceived appropriation of public space, or as a reaction against social conformity. 

Prominent examples of culture jamming include the adulteration of billboard advertising by the BLF and Ron English and the street parties and protests organised by Reclaim the Streets.  Culture jamming sometimes entails transforming mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, using the original medium's communication method.

Related concepts. E-democracy

E-democracy (electronic democracy) is a form of direct democracy that uses information technologies and communication technologies and strategies for political and governance processes.

E-democracy aims for broader and more active citizen participation enabled by the Internet, mobile communications, social networking and other technologies. Internet is a many-to-many communication medium.Radio and television are few-to-many. Telephones are few-to-few.

The lower cost of information exchange on the Internet, as well as the high level of reach that the content potentially has, makes the Internet an attractive medium for political information, particularly amongst social interest groups and parties with lower budgets.

Flash mob tehnologies. Viral emailing.

A viral email (also known as a "pass-along email") is a certain kind of email which rapidly propagates from person to person, generally in a word-of-mouth manner.

A 2004 study into viral email behaviors identified a number of reasons as to why people may pass along emails. Most of the emails that were passed along involved humor, although other factors - such as the presence of naked pictures and warnings about crime - were identified as being significant.In viral marketing, the aim is to spread awareness about a product offering.

A number of websites are dedicated to collecting viral emails, these include Viralbank and Bore Me.

Flash mob tehnologies. Social networking software. Twitter, Myspace, Facebook etc.

Protests in Moldova  On April 6, 2009, 10,000 protesters used Twitter to mobilize out of thin air to protest the communist government, in a protest that began peaceably and turned violent. Protesters created their own searchable Twitter tag so other would-be protesters could learn of the impending protest.  

Flash mob tehnologies. Collaborative software.

Collaborative software is a concept that greatly overlaps with computer supported cooperative work (CSCW)

Software systems such as email, calendaring, text chat, wiki, and bookmarking belong to this category.  It has been suggested that Metcalfe's law — the more people who use something, the more valuable it becomes — applies to these types of software.

There are three primary ways in which humans interact: 

conversations (simple exchange)transactions (exchange money for goods)collaborations (In collaboration alteration of a collaboration entity)

 

Examples include development of an ideacreation of a designachievement of a shared goal. 

 Collaboration cannot take place in a vacuum, it requires individuals working together in a coordinated fashion, towards a common goal.

Flash mob computing.

Flash mob computing (or a flash mob computer) is a temporary ad-hoc computer cluster running specific software to coordinate the individual computers into one single supercomputer.  The first flash mob computer was created on April 3, 2004 at the University of San Francisco using software written at USF called FlashMob

Flash mob - everyone can do itfor funfor reasonfor change

List of resources

Wikipedia on flash mobCulture JammingSmart mobflash mob bangcollective intelligenceSocial_contractE-democracyCritical_massFlash mobs: a new social phenomenon?Smart mob storms LondonPillow fights go violentManhattan Mob Meets Its MakerViral emailCollaborative softwareFlash_mob_computingTrivial technologies (Twitter, Flash Mobs) have power in non-democratic countriesFlash Mobs Demonstrate Power of Technology, But May do More Harm Than GoodTechnology Helping City Deter Violence, Flash Mobs