Flash mob in San Francisco this past weekend
The hottest new trend thanks to technology -- email, Yahoo! group (groups.yahoo. com/group/the_mob_project), Craigslist, social networking sites like Friendster and blogs -- is called Flash Mobs, a high-tech version of performance art put together by a few folks and hundreds of strangers who hear about it and decide to participate. It first began thanks to "Bill" in Manhattan in May who emailed friends and friends of friends to congregate at a Macy's and ask the staff there for their help in purchasing a "love rug" for their commune. This San Francisco Chronicle story describes the second such occurrence of a Flash mob in San Francisco this past Saturday:
Chaos erupts at exactly 2:07 p.m. Sun-bathers suddenly leap to their feet and friends break formation. Strangers begin grabbing one another's hands and running toward a central point in the park. Pedestrians on Dolores Street and patrons of a sidewalk cafe charge up the hill to join them.
...Flash mobs are a distinctly 21st century phenomenon, the latest and most flamboyant example of how Internet connectivity is inspiring do-it-yourself communities in the offline world. These can range from a political action (Seattle's WTO demonstrations and the recent ousting of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, both of which relied on mobile technology) to organizing parties-with-a-purpose (the Guerrilla Queer Bar Web site periodically organizes takeovers of Bay Area straight bars for a night).
...While he applauds the fun aspects of flash mobs, Howard Rheingold, the Mill Valley author of "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution," says the mobs are also reflective of a larger movement toward self-organizing social networks created through interconnected, real-time technologies such as cell phone text messaging, PDAs and the Internet.