This is what I've learned in this class. Smart Mobs have a chance of becoming the new system of government in the near or distant future, depending on how much our technology evolves. We have already seen people who have made robots and other things to do their jobs and GPS is probably everywhere. I fear for those that do not have, can afford or know how to use computers and networks.

There is also a chance of being apart of a giant Panopticon, and unless there are people out there that want to make bold statements, then crime may become nonexsistant. There is also the possibility of humans losing their ability to be humane. What will be the chance that robots be treated as humans and humans as robots? It is pretty bad, because you never know what to expect from the future, and the only thing you can do is become a part of the system.

-Prescott
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Here is a collection of important quotes, and concepts from the book (will be added to):

"The 'Killer Apps' of tomorrow's mobile infocom industry won't be hardware devices or software programs but social practices" (as in facebook and myspace)

Mobile internet when it really arrives, will not be just a way to do old things while moving. It will be a way to do things that couldn't be done before.

new social forms of the early twenty-first century will greatly enhance the power of social networks.

Mobile phones triggered a power shift in japan freed youth from "the tyrany of the landslide shared by inquisitive family members, creating a space for private communication and an agency that alters possibilities for social action.


In may 2000, the US govt ended GPS scrabling, and a civilian market for GPS started to blossom. The US has ordered all telephones sold in the US to become location-aware by 2005, for the purpose of improving emergency services.

RFID tags will revolutionize transport, purchasing, and tracking of products, once the “penny tag” price is realized. The current tags are getting closer by the day, due to using silicon chip technology instead of metal coils as in the past.
Link > http://www.schmidtwriting.com/articles/clients/tr/beyond.pdf


RFID tags are being looked into for use in currency, “American civil libertarians assert that sentient currency would violate the US constitutional prohibition against unlawful search and seizure” due to the fact they would be able to say who has had it, what it has purchased, and where it has been, or is.

“People for whom pervasive computing is an abstraction will understand very clearly that the traditional and material have changed when the air they breathe might be watching them.” This would be accomplished by “smart dust”, chips so small they are dust like.

Chopstick method of computing will soon be more popular as you will be able to “pick up” an group of data (a picture) and “drop it” onto another computer (such as a wall screen)

Gershenfeld’s long-standing belief that “ the real promise of connecting computers is to free people by embedding the means to solve problems in the things around us. “

Cyborg computing :

Cyborg computing in what Mann calls “Cyborgspace” are not. In his view, a dehumanizing dystopia but are a defenseive strategy against technological tyranny.

Mann’s reaction to the technologically enhanced Society of the Spectacle that surrounds him is to use WearComp to filter commercial advertisements out of his visual field.

Mann understood that one cyborg would not change society. True democratization would only grow from mass adoption of the technology. The community of cyborgs he had longed for in the lonely early decades of his life slowly began to emerge. A documentary film about Mann, titled Cyberman premiered in March 2002.

It seems clear that the next 10 years will see more and more inanimate objects joining the web and more people linked through mobile group-forming network technologies. … depends less on computing power or communications bandwidth and more on trust and willingness to risk the suckers payoff. That’s where reputation could make the crucial difference.

Reputation:

Reputation marks the spot where technology and cooperation converge. The most long-lasting social effects of technology always go beyond the quantitative efficiency of doing old things more quickly or more cheaply. The most profoundly transformative potential of connecting human social proclivities to the efficiency of the information technologies is the chance to do new things together, the potential for cooperating on scales and in ways never before possible. Limiting factors in the growth of human social arrangements have always been overcome by the ability to cooperate on larger scales: the emergence of agriculture ten thousand years ago, the origin of the alphabet five thousand years ago, the development of sciences, the nation state, the telegraph in recent centuries, did more than accelerate the pace of life and make it possible for the human population to expand. These cultural levers also enlarged the scale of cooperation, radically altering the way people live.

Trading know-how with people on six continents in real time, however , is more than just new: it fundamentally transforms knowledge-sharing by drastically lowering the transaction cost of matching questions and answers.

The opposite of the free rider problem emerged in a number of forms-hordes of compulsive contributors. (snow crash)

“Imagine a world where there are two kinds of media power: one comes through media concentration, where any message gains authority simply by being broadcast on network television; the other comes through grass-roots intermediaries, where a message gains visibility only if it is deemed relevant to a loose network of diverse publics. Broadcasting will place issues on the national agenda and define core values; bloggers will reframe those issues for different publics and ensure that everyone has a chance to be heard.”

-Brandon

Key breakthroughs won’t come from established industry citations of amateurs. Especially associations of amateurs.
Handheld devices are now able to locate other devices on the continent within a few yards
Moore’s law – computer chips get cheaper and more powerful
Metacafe’s law pg xv
A new kind of digital divide will come in ten years when people who know how to use technology will band to gather leaving those who don’t behind pg xix
The emergence of the cell phone has brought about the creation of a new digital public space that is available from anywhere in the world pg 5

Keys to a Smart Mob
· Democracy
· Regulation and deregulation
· Central of media and present
Tech
· Good
· Merely a tool
o The people must maintain the tools
o Maintain control over the tools
People
· Motivated by individual interest
· Must maintain human dignity
o Mechanizing leads to degrading human dignity