Howard Rheingold On Our Mobile World

Roland Piquepaille writes "Howard Rheingold is the well-known author of "Smart Mobs" and many other books describing the evolution of our societies. His last book predicted the transformation of our society into a mobile one. Four years later, his forecast is more than confirmed. As one of the futurologists who can detect the emerging technology trends behind our daily lives, I wanted to know what Howard was thinking in 2006. He was kind enough to agree for an interview which was conducted by e-mail in mid-June. We discuss the importance of mobile technology, blogs, the changing climate, and the future of surveillance" From the article: "The power of the technologies packed into mobile devices continues to multiply, the diffusion of devices to all parts of the world and socioeconomic strata broadens, the spread of knowledge about how to use technologies to organize political, economic, social, cultural collective action quickens. It is in the convergence of the technical, cognitive, and social forces generates that the real power of smart mobs -- for both constructive and destructive."

Re:Just Criticism

[Umbral Blot]

Here's another gem from the article: "I'm concentrating on continuing to catalyze an interdisciplinary study of cooperation and collective action, and creating curricula for teaching young people about civic engagement through the use of participatory media." which translates to: I'm still studying collective action, as well as teaching kids to use gadgets to get involved with their communities. Go buzzwords go!

Who here is sick of "futurologists"

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, they make very vague predictions and sometimes manage to be right....um...hooray? Not to mention that more often than not, if they make a specific prediction(and not one so vague that it is impossible to prove them wrong) 9 times out of 10 they would be wrong. If you would have said 20 years ago that the Chinese would put a man into space before the Japanese successfully launched a private satellite, all the so called "futurists" who were predicting that Japan would take over the world technologically would have laughed you out of the room. And yet that is the situation we have today.
Call me when one of these people does something useful.

The other end of the stick

[DrSkwid]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/21/whatever_h appened_to_smartphones/ [theregister.co.uk]

Whatever happened to... the smartphone?

A few years ago an American business consultant and author published a very silly book called 'Smart Mobs' - which even predicted that phone-toting nerds would be at the vanguard of social upheaval.

But something funny happened on the way to this digital nirvana. Perhaps the signs were there from the start: 'Smart Mobs' couldn't find a UK publisher. A website of the same name continues, however, apparently staffed by volunteers, and making its ghostly way across the web like a latter day Marie Celeste. Alas the site still has a category called "How To Recognize The Future When It Lands On You.

Shotgun Futurology

[pieterh]

I never liked reading Rheingold because he always said the most obvious things using the most buzzwords possible. Very tiring, like one long endless Wired article.

The future is always easy to predict, only the details seems to go wrong.

Yes, people will continue to get more and more interconnected, as every phone turns into a full-on mobile computer/camera complete with infinite memory, as social life moves more and more into the virtual world. Yes, the old patterns of mass movement to work will end as oil continues to cost more and more. No, electric cars won't solve anything. Yes, Japan will produce life-like robots but it'll be small firms in the US and France that produce the bots that finally make it into every home, and they'll be toys, tools, avatars, and for some people, friends. Yes, nuclear power will make a big comeback. No, it won't power our cars. Yes, China and India are going to become information superpowers. No, they won't toppled the US from its throne. Yes, there will be a lot of war in the future, and a lot of it will be fragmented, because just as mobile phones disrupt the traditional social forms, they also disrupt fighting. "Smart armies"? Give them all Blackberries. Yes, there will be a nuclear terrorist attack. No, it won't be in New York or Washington, but probably in Delhi or Tehran. Yes, Linux will take Windows off the desktop, but really not in the way you'd expect. No, no-one will care when it happens. Yes, there will be a black US president one day. No, she won't be a republican.

The future is not so hard to predict - just look at all the domains where people are competing hardest to innovate, then assume ten years of progress, slower than you'd expect but more profound than you'd believe possible, and then see how people would use those changes to improve and simplify their lives.

It does not take buzzwords.