Finland's Smart Mobs
Howard Rheingold: Helsinki's Aula.The Aula community in Helsinki and cyberspace is still my favorite smart mob - five hundred Finns who design and use mobile media to flock and blog, socialize and collaborate in geographic and virtual places simultaneously. When I spent an evening in June, 2002 with some of the Aula members, I had the opportunity to hang out in the "urban living room for the networked society" they were still constructing when I first met them, a year previously.
Howard's upcoming book, "Smart Mobs", has been getting lots of press lately including this piece in the Washington Post. I visited Aula just before it opened a year ago, and was dazzled by its founders' ideas. Howard has captured perfectly what's happening there.
The smart mobs notion is going to turn into a meme. Count on it.
http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1382/