Portland Antiwar Rally Goes Wireless
from the hello,-smart-mob dept
We've discussed the idea of "Smart Mobs" before and now read Howard Rheingold's SmartMobs blog on the subject regularly. So, it shouldn't be a surprise that there's more evidence every day of the concept catching on. The latest is that anti-war protestors in Portland used text messaging to keep themselves informed as to what was happening where. They used a fairly simple system (involving a human middleman). Anyone who was interested could sign up on the web to receive alerts. Then, anyone on the street could send alerts to a guy sitting by a computer, who would turn around and blast those messages out to everyone on the list - telling them where marchers were headed, or where police were. No matter what your opinion of the protestors are, it is fascinating to watch this type of communication in action.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Witnessed it myself
I watched a fascinating choreography of riot police squads split up into 3 or 4 groups and converge on Black Block mobs. The cops knew how to come around a corner to surprise the mob. The mob would panic and disperse, then re-materialize on another street corner. The dance went on for hours, travelling right through the tourist district of SF. It was a somewhat anti-climactic affair. Both sides were locked in a kind of moving stalemate.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And in Tokyo...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]