Written after reading 'Smart Mobs' By Howard Rheingold

Evolution experiences jumps in complexity. The internet is the most recent jump. “Smart Mobs” is essentially about mankind’s attempt to organizing this new level of complexity. The architecture of the internet makes its natural state unorganized, but we’re creating ways in which it can self organization (I’ll get to that in a bit). Before the internet we would mail things to addresses -Physical spaces. We would call people on the phone –both participants of the conversation existing in a physical space (background noise hints to their location). Now we are interacting with people in a virtual space. The people controlling the avatars do exist in a physical space, but the interactions are taking place in an entirely virtual world. The noosphere is something that exists, but we are never confronted with its existence. It is there in the background. The internet forces us to realize that the realm of human thought can exist separately from physicality’s; that the avatar is a nonexistent extension of the self. This will have a huge impact in the way we view reality. On page 17 Rheingold mentions the Finnish internet dudes who realized this dichotomy of physical and noospheric social spheres. They attempted to design an internet café where both types of interactions could occur. Goffman’s theory (about the different “faces” we present to different audiences) is a nuanced feature of our social selves that many people don’t pick up on. Now it’s a blatant fact and everyone sees it – a good example of this (on page xvi) is when the Helsinki kids are talking to the elder people and they all read a text together and giggle. There may have been bad words in that text that that kids can’t mutter around adults; multiple noospheres can, for the first time ever, exist at the same time. Children below the age of 3 do not know of a disconnected between what their own minds know and what other people’s minds know. At a certain developmental point we instinctively realize our minds are separate, but it’s never intellectualized. The forced intellectualization of this will have huge ramifications. Talking on AIM, you sometimes take on a different tongue for each message box, and you’re seeing them side by side - jumping between them. One ramification of this insight may be a drive to become a more ‘realized’ person, finding a medium between all versions of self; being more honest with who you are at a base level.

Website classifications of what you like and don’t like are the first signs of the noosphere being tracked without a human creating something (i.e. writing a book or talking on the phone) – they’re seeing their noosphere by simply interacting with the (virtual)world. More importantly however – the internet is learning about us. It’s learning that people who like band X will probably like band Y. Is it becoming a brain? Steven Johnston in Emergence says yes, but not in a ‘human brain’ kind of way. The internet has no intelligence – it doesn’t self organize as it grows, like a city. City goers section themselves naturally. The internet’s base architecture creates an inherently unorganized structure. Google was created so this horrible mess could be made sense of. Its base architecture needs to change, and the beginnings of this new architecture has already been incorporated into sites like Slashdot and Alexia (p114/122 and p118 respectively). As Johnston says “An emergent software programs that tracks associations between Web sites or audio CDs doesn’t listen to the music; it follows purchase patterns or listening habits that we supply it and lets us deal with the air guitar or off-key warbling.”

On page 5 Rheingold writes “Has the definition of ‘presence’ become uncoupled from the physical places and reassigned to a social network that extends beyond any single location.” John Paul Satre in Existentialism and Human Emotions purports the interconnectedness of all human beings is very hard to come to terms with because we are so stuck in our own physical locations. Perhaps this separation from the physical alludes to a future where we can all exist outside of separation - eventually realizing a oneness and an absolute interconnectedness. The book addresses the problem of cooperation. I believe when society is fully eloped with this technological epoch, cooperation will become easier – Rheingold mentions that when dealing with face-to-face interactions, the percentage of people cooperating goes up. People will eventually be able to see the people who their actions affect. If you spill a smoothy and then leave really quickly, the person who’s cleaning up the drink may twitter. You could read the about the dispirit you caused someone. Of course that’s a very ‘now’ way of looking at it. The human mind, and its worldview, will evolve alongside technology; we may help clean it up on principle because we feel connected with the person that has to, not because we can read their emotional aftermath.

Bit of randomness - Page 109 – Rheingold mentions Mann’s ability to ‘gray out’ the world and pull up colourful text (a book or his study notes perhaps). The human brain needs downtime; we need to relax every so often. Walking in a park or mindlessly watching a baseball game is healthy. If people get carried away with being ‘always on’ they may suffer creatively. Some of the world’s greatest inventions popped into minds when they were in a relaxed state.