Even during the frenzied times last week when some of the text messages on the unmoderated RNCMOBNET and RNCRIOTS may have been inaccurate, disagreeable, incendiary or silly, there were always more sensible voices responding to bring a collective kind of intelligence to the overall stream.

On Sunday afternoon, August 29, I received this exchange of messages from four different people at RNCMOBNET: (I have omitted the nicknames of the senders and changed them to 'mobster')
----- 15:00:47 Sun, Aug 29 ----- BIG FIRE in front of McDonalds @ Madison SQ. Big Green thing set on fire. --- mobsterA
----- 15:06:15 Sun, Aug 29 ----- black bloc just ruined what was a peaceful and unifying march by setting the dragon on fire @ MSG. :( --- mobsterB
----- 15:09:49 Sun, Aug 29 ----- differnt tackets for differnt groups. march is already over and the republicans are stil here. dont put down other groups. --- mobsterC
----- 15:11:24 Sun, Aug 29 ----- It wasn't 30 foot. It was a rickshaw bike made into dragon head... and fire was out before NYFD arrived. --- mobsterD

I believe that this exchange - spontaneous and delivered in an instant in real-time to anyone in the world - mirrors the larger debate that is currently taking place in the media over free speech. Whether the messages were right or wrong and whether the paper dragon fire or crystal pepsi is bad or good is not so important to me. What matters is that the news was transmitted freely. And to me, that's the purpose - to allow people to figure out what's right or wrong for themselves without the message being packaged for them by commercial interests.

On Sunday evening, August 29 I received lots of descriptions of police actions from one sender that may have been incorrect, or may even have been lies told purposely to incite people to anti-police action. But immediately following came messages from other senders questioning, challenging or confirming the accuracy of the messages sent. To me, this demonstrated why they are known as 'smart mobs'

The following is a message I received from RNCRIOTS from around the Times Square, which sounded absurd, but turned out to be true:
----- 17:57:12 Sun, Aug 29 ----- Police using huge orange nets to arrest people, beware of what looks like orange plastic fence material --- mobsterE

And later from RNCMOBNET a message which no one confirmed:
----- 19:32:00 Sun, Aug 29 ----- Four more badge bunnies pulled (or fell off) off thier horses near central park, two of the horses are loose --- mobsterE
I wondered whether the sender was still reading 'Breakfast at Tiffany's.

And again, from RNCRIOTS this message sounded insane:
----- 19:40:47 Sun, Aug 29 ----- Secret Service just pulled disabled double amputee out of his wheelchair, he is being beaten by pigs --- mobsterE

And following on RNCMOBNET came four different people's remarks:
----- 19:48:23 Sun, Aug 29 ----- Give actions street locations --- mobsterF
----- 19:50:18 Sun, Aug 29 ----- Cross streets? --- mobsterG
----- 19:50:36 Sun, Aug 29 ----- There is no confirmation on this --- mobsterH
----- 19:57:04 Sun, Aug 29 ----- If you won't give locations, we have to assume you're full of shit. --- mobsterI

Complementing the blizzard of text messages, lots of digital photos were sent via cell phone by protestors and posted on websites such as MOPORT  http://www.moport.org/rnc_moport.php and INDYMEDIA  http://nyc.indymedia.org/media/index.php. Seen in sequence as they were taken, the images are dynamic, exuberant, often over-dark or over-bright, shaky or posed, corny or alarming, and full of sub-text of all kinds. This weird one is a good example:  http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/116001

To me, these amateur serial images together comprise a new medium, distinct from newspaper and magazine photography. In addition, I think that the spread of cell phone photography influences professional photojournalists, encouraging them to publish less technically perfect photos in favor of ones with more immediacy and liveliness.

Tuesday, there were messages entreating others to provide info about messages going missing, and perhaps being blocked or getting stuck in some kind of technical drain pipe. That's when I learned how to translate the abbreviation "WTF" - what the f&#%. It seems that lots of people suddenly stopped receiving messages. But I wasn't paying attention all day since I was at work, so I don't know if it happened to my cell phone service or not.

A 'workaround' for this scenario is to subscribe to more than one mob. Since messages are often forwarded from one mob to another, the redundant duplicating of messages provides confirmation that each stream is functioning. Unlike commercial text messaging sites such as  http://www.upoc.com/, activist smart mobsters such as those at  http://www.txtmob.com/ are more technically and tactically inclined. They know how to spread themselves out among different service providers, start new mobs, and change URLs often. You can't subscribe to RNCMOBNET or RNCRIOTS today, since they have vaporized.

COMMS_DISPATCH text transcripts are still posted on the web while I write this. If you get a chance to read Tuesday's text from start to finish, you will really get the feeling of what things were like that day. Go to  http://www.txtmob.com/ and sign up as a new user. Make up a cool nickname for yourself such as CITIZENZRULE. Enter a cell phone number, yours perhaps, or someone else's. Then, join group COMMS_DISPATCH and click on "history".

I would like thank all the non-violent smart mobsters and photographers for their contributions to making this a vibrant, inspiring, hopeful and fairly peaceful week.

To support last Sunday's march organizers, and to consult the main source of information on last week's events please see United for Peace and Justice website:  http://www.unitedforpeace.org/

For discussions of messages going missing last Tuesday:
 http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2004/09/04/tmobile_blocke.html

For more articles on the RNC smart mobs:
 http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/09/02/textmessaging.protest.ap/index.html
 http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2004/09/04/more_on_smsblo.html

For a radio stories about Tuesday's arrests:
 http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/35423.

For luddites to learn how to send text messages:
 http://cellphones.about.com/c/ht/02/02/How_Type_Send_Text1014059539.htm

For tekkies who already know how to build their own cell phones, here is a 'mobile web publishing resource blog':  http://www.moblogging.org/

Fascinating article, thanks for posting and props to the textmob folks for putting the program together.

The only troubling thing I see is the system's weakness to infiltration/subversion. We saw some of that this week. Only in the affinity group model have we developed the ability to resist infiltration.

Now I'm not discouraging the use of textmob, I think it's great, but it's time to start thinking about cellularized distribution. I'm also not arguing against "upchanneling" text messages to websites, I'm glad to hear the moderated chanels worked well but again, organization on an affinity level could resist penetration by leaving structures behind that could do the job if the "core" has been compromised.

Infiltration has long been a tactic of the state and it's been a very successful one. It's safe to assume that they'll exploit our electronic gathering places. Like this one! Smile for the spooks everyone! Hiya spooks!

Hi to you too! A lot of us are on your side. We like having a free country too.

The whole World is watching!

Oh, the whole world is watching? So everyone in Subcontinental Africa just got a dish and hook up with Direct TV. My tv rabbit ears are all I can afford - PBS hardly touched any events outside of the Garden.

----- “Only in the affinity group model have we developed the ability to resist infiltration.†– teejo

Thank you teejo, and may I get more comments on how to do this please?

I agree with you, and I think that smart mobs probably got started by going from cell phone to cell phone, without going through the web. This method would be a good way to create and maintain an additional or alternate ‘channel’ to a web-based mob, since websites can crash or serve as a police radio channels, as you noted.

The affinity group, if I understand you correctly, is a simple, elegant model: Take one cell phone, which holds maybe 100 to 200 phone numbers in memory. Create a ‘caller group’. Type a message and send it to the group. Those who receive the message hit ‘forward’ to send it to their group and so on and so on.

It takes some doing on the part of individuals to create their own ‘caller group’ In fact, being a neophyte, I have been trying for days to do just that. I have a Nokia 6010. I get as far as ‘contacts’ ‘caller groups’ ‘friends’ and then I get lost. Someday, I will get there, and thanks for your encouragement.

Sorry to bust your bubble but this didn't just started happening in Seatle during the WTO. Text messaging has been used in the Phillipines for years for organizing protest. As a matter of fact there were contest where they tried to see who could type their message the fastest. This is a mistake that white activist make all the time, they give themselves credit for creating or starting something they neither started nor created, then congratulate themselves. Its insulting to people of color, because it ignores the work they have been doing for years. Its as if its not real until white people step into the picture. Its the same mentality that there were no people here before Columbus, as if the native weren't real people.

As far as this being employed at the WTO, this is the first time I've ever heard of this being used at the WTO.

Thanks to everyone who sent inquiries and colorful comments. I really appreciate reading the discussion. After reading a lot of different tech blogs this week I now believe, in hindsight, that us activists made a mistake in the way we used text messaging at the RNC - one that we can readily learn from, however, if we dare continue to use the term 'smart mobs' to describe ourselves.

Ever since Tuesday, September 1, protestors and tech bloggers have been seeking an explanation for the reports about messages that had suddenly stopped coming in that day from Txtmob. (Please see  http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/111435)

There were lots of questions posted all over on Thursday, September 3, after Txtmob sent a message to its members that T-mobile had in fact blocked outgoing messages from being sent. (Please see  http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2004/09/04/tmobile_blocke.html)

And then, on Tuesday, September 7, a posting on BoingBoing.net by a savvy employee of T-mobile said that T-mobile's computer had most likely blocked messages that it determined to be spam based on the volume and frequency of messages that came from a single source, which the computer wasn’t familiar with, and not based on the content of the messages, which the computer didn't read anyway. "Update on "Did T-Mobile block TxTMOB messages during RNC?"
 http://www.boingboing.net/2004/09/07/update_on_did_tmobil.html

It seems to me that hundreds of smart people relied on one stupid computer to transmit our messages, rather than transmitting them ourselves. And by doing so, we lost lots of our words in a technical fustercluck. It was what Teejo in the previous post was warning against when he cautioned us against "upchanneling" text messages to websites

Even I, who failed pre-calculus the first time, know that the internet itself was designed as a cluster of little machines and not one big central one. If an internet server in Chicago is taken out, messages travelling from Cincinnati to Kalamazoo automatically reroute themselves through Kamchatka. There is neither a borg cube nor a CBS 'black rock' -type conglomerate controlling traffic on the web (Not yet anyway, so hold off before you start lining your windows with aluminum foil.)

Maybe it’s time for us all to stop relying on the expertise of a handful of violent techno freaks in Seattle who know how to broadcast messages from micro-radios embedded in steel studs in their tongues. ('white' techno freaks, as some might add). Radios, loudspeakers, cell phones, cameras, videocams, software and computers are our means of peaceful protest now. Let's download the instruction manuals and learn how to deploy them ourselves. And I don't mean just learning how to download the theme song from 'Lost in Space' to secretly replace your boss' cell phone ring tone.

This morning at Grand Central Station I stepped off my train and onto the crowded platform just like thousands of us do every day. Except that today, one man chanted loudly as he walked, "One thousand of our troops dead in Iraq today one thousand of our troops dead..." By reciting the headlines aloud on his way to work, he was demonstrating in one of the most startling and effective ways that I have seen or felt throughout the previous week of protests.

Very truly yours,
Evelyn Fitzgerald

To attend a vigil in your town tonight, Thursday, September 9, for the one thousand troops, activate yourself by going to:  http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2589

For more history of smart mobs in the Philippines and in Seattle, go to www.demos.co.uk citation from "Smart Mobs" book by Howard Rheingold
 http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:IgTCnuIm-cwJ:www.demos.co.uk/networklogic15rheingold_pdf_media_public.aspx+President-Joseph-Estrada+smart-mob&hl=en

And if you still want to start your own mob by using a corporate web portal, here one way to do it:  http://mobile.yahoo.com/messenger

That link I mentioned above for history of smart mobs in the Philippines and in Seattle is an interesting one. Please allow me to post it more accurately:

 http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/networks/

Article "Smart Mobs: The Power of the Mobile Many" by Howard Rheingold

From the publication "Network Logic - Who governs in an interconnected world?" Authors/Editors: Helen McCarthy, Paul Miller, Paul Skidmore. 2004. Contributors are listed there.

Click on the name of the article you would like to read, and hit "save". (It did not work when I hit "open"). The pdf file will be saved onto your computer, and then you can click on it to open it.

Very truly yours,

Evelyn Fitzgerald