by Howard Rheingold (Basic Books, 2003)

In the pivotal Smart Mobs, Rheingold explores the transformation of collaboration, cooperation, and community via electronic networks, mobile devices, and innovative new thinking about computer-mediated social organization. Rheingold was one of the first to comprehend and explain the new ￜmediasphereￜ weￜre swimming in; Smart Mobs should be considered required reading for worldchangers everywhere.

Rheingold writes, ï¿œThe big battle coming over the future of smart mobs concerns media cartels and government agencies that are seeking to reimpose the regime of the broadcast era in which the customers of technology will be deprived of the power to create and left only with the power to consume. That power struggle is what the battles over file-sharing, copy protection, regulation of the radio spectrum are about. Are the populations of tomorrow going to be users, like the PC owners and website creators who turned technology to widespread innovation? Or will they be consumers, constrained from innovation and locked into the technology and business models of the most powerful entrenched interests?ï¿œ