Talk:Mobworld

From BluWiki

My text included on Wikis (in case it has been edited)

[edit] Anarchopedia

Online Mobs and Anarchy: some thoughts

The internet is ruled by a mob, redefined everyday (with each new user, every minute). Those "huddled masses are yearning to breathe free," the "teeming, unwashed masses" have been able to (god forbid) organize. For the first time, the mob has become virtual and deterritorialized.

It's in the internet that the promise of a real egalitarian, anarchic society can become possible. The technology of the internet provides for non-hierarchical systems that work through collaboration from many people, regardless of where they are around the world. Some examples include: peer-to-peer file sharing, open source software, and of course listservs, blogs and wikis. The wiki is becoming one of the major anarchist tools of the future: a software that allows anyone to edit or add entries to existing webpages. Wikis implicitly create systems that share decentralized information and that help develop online communities formed around specific topics. Despite recent controversy over Wikipedia (or because because of it) -- wikis are growing everyday. (Visit the World Wide Wiki at [1] (http://www.worldwidewiki.net/) for a comprehensive index.)

The potential of the internet and these collaborative systems has reenergized the anarchist movement, providing a new virtual space to discuss and organize. It is vitally important to see the psychic and spiritual potential of wikis and other collaborative systems while using and modifying the technology that creates them, especially in our conception of the mob as a driving collective force for change. Long live the online mob!

-ASouzis

[edit] CommunityWiki

Comments

I think the recent controversy surrounding Wikipedia (john seigenthaler, etc.) is, in its own way, praise of wikis. The fact that Wikipedia is believed to be the most popular encyclopedia ever in human history, and the recent assertion in Nature magazine that the entries are nearly as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica, is proving that wikis are really making a difference in the way we think about sharing and accessing information. All the recent articles in Time, the New York Times, and USA Today (among other mainstream press) describing the recent controversy and debating the usefulness of Wikipedia can be read definitively as a sign that wikis are on the radar, and – in the way that they are now being perceived as a threat to corporate control of information – are here to stay. ASouzis (new to CommunityWiki) #

[edit] TheFutureOfGlobalFlashmob

It seems like the flash mobbing, in its present state, might be over, particularly in countries where they have occurred already and where there has been some press coverage. The power of the flash mobbing lay in the fact that it was totally spontaneous and uncategorizable. If you were a person on the street witnessing the flash mob, you would have no idea what was happening. (And, of course, that was the point!) But after they received media attention (even the very mainstream U.S.-based Time magazine wrote about flash mobs in 2003) it became another trendy art event. And after that, it seems to have lost much of its new, shock effect. It was brilliant though -- a way of actualizing the anonymous mobs from the online world in a physical space It was, without a doubt, an important historical moment that tapped into the way the Internet creates new crowds, and briefly imagined (one) way that could be expressed.

I always remember the flash mob I attended in June 2003. I had learned about it from a listserve that I subscribed to which sent us weekly listings of weird or marginal art events in New York City. The flash mob was completely intriguing and silly: we were invited to meet up at one of two bars in midtown Manhattan, based on whether your birthday fell between January-June or June-December. We knew nothing else until we got there and a guy in a trucker hat (who said not a word) showed up and handed us all instructions. We were told to walk to Macy's and head up to the rug department, find the largest red one in the corner, and right at 7:10 p.m. start talking about whether we wanted to buy the rug. If a salesperson approached us (they didn't -- they already had guessed it was some kind of joke) we were supposed to tell them that we needed a rug for a large loft that we all shared in Long Island City. At 7:20 exactly, we had to stop talking and file out. People smiled nervously but followed the directions exactly, acting very serious. Afterwards, as we filed out down the Macy escalators, we talked to our friends, ignoring the other people. The mob ended quickly. But even though this was one of the first, there was already a lot of press coverage. Surfing the web many months later, I found this Wired article that described the oneI had attended, at [WWW] http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59297,00.html.

The future of flash mobs is in how they evolve. For a brief moment in time, flash mobs gave a physical face to the virtual mob. But other events and collaborations have to take over -- and, considering how the Internet is transforming global culture -- I have no doubt many things will.

--ASouzis (NYC, flashmobber and zeitgeist-seeker)

[edit] Mobs Meme

Mobs are a meme[1] -- a virus-like language or trend that replicates itself across a culture. As collaborative online technologies grow, the idea of the mob (the teeming, unruly masses) has been transformed to a virtual world.

Further Links:

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (2002) by Howard Rheingold [www.smartmobs.com]

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (2004) by James Surowiecki

See also: Flash Mobs [2]

Online Mobs and Anarchy [3]

[edit] AcademicWiki

Comments I wanted to add some comments to a general discussion about wikis and the academy. In many ways, I see wikis as completely antithetical to the academy: wikis are iterative, collaborative collections of shared information. The process is transparent -- all changes and edits and revisions and discussions are tracked for all users to see. Writing research in the academy is different. You are expected to present original research developing out of the larger discourse, one that presents a completely different point of view. I say 'you' because it is meant to be completely individual, and your research is what propels you through the academy job market. Even on a basic level, writing on a wiki is different. The text is impermanent -- I write this knowing it may be erased or edited just a few minutes later. How much may be written will be different -- a wiki article online is usually less text, since it's harder to read alot on one page. And wiki articles require a different structure (of formatting, of links) than a research paper (either a pdf or print copy.)

I think what's really interesting is the threat that the academy is perceiving (at the same time, while many, many academics are embracing and using wikis for classwork, etc.) A lot of the recent press about Wikipedia came from librarians or academics complaining that wikipedia wasn't credentialed, or peer-reviewed, or is terribly inaccurate (despite the Nature article announcing it was nearly as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica.) I think the issue is that it exposes the processes of normalizing information -- being able to read all the revisions subtly teaches the user that any information you may read has been revised, has been edited, and is, first and foremost, comes from a certain historical context and approach -- it has not always existed, and is not necessarily true. That wikis are teaching those critical thinking skills may be even more worthwhile, fundamentally, then the information we are sharing or collecting from wiki information websites.

I write all this because I was working on a research project about wikis and online mobs, and have been trying to explore this ideas by writing them on other wikis (a self-reflexive wikis about wikis). It has been an interesting experiment -- finding wikis with interesting information, finding ways to express the thoughts -- knowing that they may change and change again. (Like our own thought processes). If you're interested, read more at [1].

-ASouzis