Posted by sharlen on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I just read Shirky’s chapter about Flash Mob. It’s actually really impressive to see that Internet can affect enough people to do something like this in public.
What a fantastic piece! I was teaching journalism at the time of the L.A. immigration protests that Shirky writes about. I, in all my academic assuredness, did a little pontificating on the idea that America had finally reached the “tipping point” when it came to exasperation with the current administration’s immigration stance.
I was wrong.
As Shirky points out, that protest was organized ad hoc, using mobile and Web 2.0 technology. It might have been an idea whose time had come but, the more likely scenario is that it was a technology whose time had come.
While this Flash Mob doesn’t have the same social significance as those immigration protests in the fall of 2006, it is no less powerful. I love the use of the technology for public art of this kind.
It kind of makes me want to create one myself. Say, on the campus of the University of Washington some day this spring… Anyone game?
What a fantastic piece! I was teaching journalism at the time of the L.A. immigration protests that Shirky writes about. I, in all my academic assuredness, did a little pontificating on the idea that America had finally reached the “tipping point” when it came to exasperation with the current administration’s immigration stance.
I was wrong.
As Shirky points out, that protest was organized ad hoc, using mobile and Web 2.0 technology. It might have been an idea whose time had come but, the more likely scenario is that it was a technology whose time had come.
While this Flash Mob doesn’t have the same social significance as those immigration protests in the fall of 2006, it is no less powerful. I love the use of the technology for public art of this kind.
It kind of makes me want to create one myself. Say, on the campus of the University of Washington some day this spring… Anyone game?