The rise of the blogosphere, the Howard Dean campaign, the emergence of Wikipedia, continued growth of open source software, the success of James Surowiecki’s book “The Wisdom of Crowds,” the publication of Steve Weber’s “The Success of Open Source,” Pierre Levy’s “Collective Intelligence,” Yochai Benkler’s “The Wealth of Networks,” the rise of citizen journalist and citizen news-sharing sites like Digg and Reddit, the role of text-messages in breaking news of the SARS epidemic in China, the dramatic cameraphone images sent directly to the Web from the site of the London tube bombing, the collective emergence response online to the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina disasters, the role of blogs and SMS in the civil disturbances across France in 2005, the success of YouTube and Google Video, del.icio.us and Flickr, are all evidence that smartmob phenomena continues to grow.
Read an interview with author and new media thinker Howard Rheingold
*Learn more about Howard Rheingold at the Whats New Media Wiki
