Howard Rheingold - Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

Author photograph Justin Hall

Howard Rheingold is one of the worlds foremost authorities on the social implications of technology. Over the past twenty years he has traveled around the world, observing and writing about emerging trends in computing, communications, and culture. One of the creators and former founding executive editor of HotWired, he has served as editor of TheWhole Catalog, Earth Review, editor-in-chief of The Millennium Whole Earth and on-line host for The Well. The author of several books, including The Virtual Community, Virtual Reality, and Tools for Thought, he lives in Mill Valley, California. Visit his web site at www.smartmobs.com.

[Rheingolds] notion of smart mobs is a provocative distillation, a sort of unified field theory of current tech thinking.

Business Week

Rheingold has for a generation examined the unintended and imaginative uses of new technology by society. He helped pioneer virtual communitiesa phrase he inventedbefore most people had even heard of e-mail or seen a cell phone.

Washington Post

Mr. Rheingold can recognize a revolution. He published The VirtualCommunity in 1993, long before corporate America realized that the killer app of the Internet would be the connections that the Net allows between people. He sees a similar shift with smart mobs and what he calls swarming.

New York Times

[Rheingold is] exploring intriguing new questions.

New Scientist

[Rheingold] draws on a bewildering range of disciplines to examine what life in such a world might be like.much food for thought for people who want to be informed about whats about to engulf them.

San Francisco Chronicle

This is an extraordinarily important book, rich in implications for everyone from teens and CEOs, to parents and Pentagon generals.

Paul Saffo, Director, Institute for the Future

To track where technology bends society, Ive learned to follow Howard Rheingold. He always leads a grand tour, and this time is no different. In this book, he takes you to the edge of the global brain as made real by thumb tribes and mobile networks. You dont want to leave.

Kevin Kelly, Editor-at-Large, Wired

From techno-animism and hyper-coordination, to smartifacts and social networks, this insightful and engaging guided tour through the next communications renaissance is at turns inspiring, frightening, but always fascinating. Smart Mobs is Rheingolds greatest achievement.

Douglas Rushkoff, author of
Coercion, Media Virus, and Nothing Sacred,
Professor, New York Universitys
Interactive Telecommunications Program

Howard Rheingold has always been about ten years ahead of the rest of us, but Smart Mobs may be his most visionary book yet. Anyone interested in the future of technology and society will find this book fascinating reading.

Steven Johnson, author of Emergence and Interface Culture

Smart Mobs is hot on the trail of a technology that is hot-wiring social networks around the world, with unexpected and fascinating implications for all of us.

David Weinberger, author of
Small Pieces Loosely Joined and co-author of
The Cluetrain Manifesto

I congratulate Howard Rheingold on his very thorough summary of one of the greatest transformations of human societyperhaps even more profound than the development of writing.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke

SMART MOBS

The Next Social Revolution

HOWARD RHEINGOLD