Eric has a nice collection of articles on the dimissing of “flash mobs”. No less then the NYTimes itselfs has condescended to label them irrelevant and pointless. Having been so labeled by the NYTimes myself, I have to take this to mean one is doing something right. After all, flash mobs didn’t start with teenage girls coordinating Prince Williams sightings, the first time I heard about it was several years ago, when text messaging was able to field 100,000 protesters in the Philippines (back when no one had seen a 100,000 people in the street since the ’70s) and bring down Joseph Estrada’s government.

Just reading about it rocked my world; changed my idea about what was possible, and the role technology could play in fomenting revolution. I had spent the preceding years reading Sterling’s Islands in the Net, and putting Protest.net, and Indymedia forward as examples of revolutionary tech, but secretly, deep down, I had my doubts about whether technology was going to be a sum positive force, or not. Reading about the Philippines changed that.

Of course the NYTimes rather notoriously missed the 100,000 people who showed up in front of their office last February as well, so if perhaps they missed some of the more radical aspects of technology enhanced social organizing, we can forgive them their encroaching senility.

Yes the ideas have been picked up by a performance art scene who is largely depoliticizing it, (like white boy rap which sells better in the suburbs) but it still has people out on the streets experimenting with collective power. And, if they had an explicit political agenda, do you think the Grey Lady would tell you about it?