Word: flash
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Could flash mobs be an antidote? Probably not, at least as they are currently configured. Flash mobs feed off social capital, with friends inviting friends, but there is little evidence that they create new friendships or deepen existing ones—if that is even their intent...
There is promise, however, at the intersection between technology and social capital, where flash mobs were born. Telephones and the Internet, unlike the passive medium of television, are both used actively and could potentially knit us more closely together. Our society is in a giant period of experimentation, and we may be inventing the technological building blocks of new social connections. For example, Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs—organized in the same way as flash mobs, but with more serious intentions—details how these active technologies helped Philippine and Seattle protesters redeploy themselves...
...intrinsic appeal of flash mobs as fun and spontaneous outlets for social energy may eventually make them useful for the generation of social capital. In Making Democracy Work, Putnam observed that stronger local civic networks, such as those composed of choral groups and soccer clubs, helped to explain why some Italian regional governments were more responsive, even though Italian citizens sang or kicked soccer balls only because they enjoyed it. Fun activities like flash mobs may thus contain a hidden tonic for new social capital...
Although the road to hell is lined with technological predictions, it is possible that flASH mobs contain the seeds of a more useful craze when combined with the political and cultural goals of SMart mobs. In these “SMASH mobs,” as one might call them, hundreds of smokers might appear in Groucho Marx noses and glasses and smoke surreptitiously outside City Hall to make a political statement about Boston’s recent ban on smoking in public places. SMASH mobs might also combine fun with social-capital building: hundreds of Cambridge residents might...
...Crimson’s readers could certainly concoct other examples that employ the organizing techniques and fun of flash mobs to strengthen social capital or promote political and cultural change. Flash mobs have an “all dressed up with no place to go” quality; let’s give them a destination...