I’m at Internet Librarian 2008, and waiting to listen to Howard Rheingold, who’s giving the first keynote session this year – cool! Here’s what he said:

Cool – Jane Dysart (conference organizer) actually knows Howard.

In Tokyo in 2000, he noticed people looking at the screens of their cell phones rather than holding them up to their ears.

Somewhere else, he saw a teen look at the screen of his phone, and smiled … then shared it with a friend.

Kids today flock like birds – they show up at the same place at the same time – because of txting

Philippines – riots organized by txting

He wrote the book Smart Mobs

Smart mobs emerge when media amplifies cooperation
… are where the PC was in 1980 and the Internet was in 1990

There have been alot of sms-organized protests, not all of them peaceful

He’s going back through history, explaining how communities organized

[aside – I love how Howard uses himself as a prop in his slides – it’s hilarious!]

Luther’s success again the catholic church was helped in part by the printing press – change was helped along by the new technology of the day

Now he’s talking about companies that work together in new ways, either internally or via an outside community

Open source works because of community

Google and Amazon as examples of companies that opened up their money-making services to others

Ebay and Wikipedia – communities of trust, new forms of community-driven production

Now, we’re seeing a cultural shift – 50% of teenagers have created content on the web

successful companies have created platforms for participation – wikipedia and google are great examples of this

technologies of cooperation and sharing economies
– easy to use
– enable connections
– open – no license needed to publish
– group forming
– self-instructing
– leverage self-interest

He mentioned videoblogs (and flashed Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodgson on the screen, too – cool)

If you want to keep up, don’t try to keep up with the technologies – instead, keep up with the literacies (not quite sure what he meant there)

socialmediaclassroom.com – his experimental online, collaborative classroom. He invited librarians to join.