The Smart Mobs in Howard Rheingold’s book don’t seem so smart.
Swarms of people with mobile gizmos can mass to overthrow governments and on a smaller scale, co-ordinate dinner, or turnstile jumping, or soccer riots.
A Smart Mob can take down a government, but can it govern? The Seattle protesters were nimble, but their platforms weren’t that coherent (contrary opinions with pointers to cogent sources most welcome).
What processes for thinking and co-ordination are required to make decentralized action really smart, not just co-ordinated and impulsive?