Another good read when it comes out.
Librarian Reputation. Smart Mobs is live!
"Howard Rheingold's new book, "Smart Mobs," is coming out next November. It's a hell of a book, about the ways that technology enable groups of people to spontaneously form and coordinate in response to current events -- from SMS-enabled Filipiino demonstrations over official censorship to ubiquitous Japanese kids who photograph everything with their DoCoMo phones and post them online all the time.
Howard's site, SmartMobs.com, is a blog that talks about technology and events that show smart mobs in action." [Boing Boing Blog]
There's so much about information shifting on the front page alone of Rheingold's blog that I'm automatically adding his book to the Shifted Reading List sight unseen. I really hope Audible can get the audio rights to it. Here's an illustrative excerpt from the book summary:
"The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities. Their mobile devices connect them with other information devices in the environment as well as with other people's telephones. Dirt-cheap microprocessors embedded in everything from box tops to shoes are beginning to permeate furniture, buildings, neighborhoods, products with invisible intercommunicating smartifacts. When they connect the tangible objects and places of our daily lives with the Internet, handheld communication media mutate into wearable remote control devices for the physical world."
And that, my friends, is the place from which libraries need to be available - everywhere. The book's introduction is titled How to Recognize the Future When It Lands on You, and the future is certainly hovering inches away from us.
I'll be interested to read the book and see if Rheingold discusses libraries at all, considering how we could play a huge role in the information exchanged between smart mobs. Think of librarians as a force letting authentic and accurate information loose into the wild (one form of reputation).
And in the spirit of smart communication, the book's blog has a RSS feed! [The Shifted Librarian]
8:22:59 PM 
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