Smart Lynch Mobs?

[Note - this is an archived version of the original posting from 04:20 PM EDT, Apr 24 2003]

Last year I bought Howard Rheingold's book, Smart Mobs, about how new portable telecommunication technologies are allowing people to organize themselves in the physical world in novel ways. One of his examples was the use of SMS messaging to set up demonstrations and freedom rallies in the Far East.

Now we see a new and more sinister type of Smart Mob, which I am calling a Smart Lynch Mob. Wired Online reports about SMS messages feeding the SARS hysteria in Hong Kong. The most recent service will send SMS alerts to notify receivers of "contaminated" buildings where those suspected of being SARS carriers have recently visited!

It's just a matter of time before this technology would allow SARS victims themselves to be identified, located and publicly branded. Combining these SMS alerts with future visions of augmented reality, we could imagine that SMS patients would be labelled via a computer overlay as they walked down the street, carrying a virtual scarlet letter, in effect.

The point is that this technology can be used for harmful as well as helpful purposes. Rheingold titled his book Smart Mobs, but a mob has never been considered a beneficial form of human organization. Mobs are uncivilized, irrational and prone to violence. SMS in Hong Kong is proving to be better at rumor-mongering than in spreading useful information, according to the Wired Article.

If we do face a future of Smart Mobs, we should be prepared for the bad side as well as the good. I'm not in love with a technology which is going to bring us back to the age of the mob.