Wednesday, September 08, 2004
The politics of SMS texting, by Howard Rheingold
“Texting and electoral politics are the strange bedfellows of the 21st century. The use of SMS for political action is only in its infancy, but has already enabled citizens to topple governments and tip elections from Manila to Madrid. The electoral power of texting could be an early indicator of future social upheaval: whenever people gain the power to organize collective action on new scales, in new places, at new tempos, with groups they had not been able to organize before, societies and civilizations change.
The alphabet made empires and armies possible, the printing press made democracy and science possible; railroads and telephones, corporations and bureaucracies co-evolved. Now the fusion of the mobile telephone, the PC, and the Internet is beginning to make new forms of collective action possible on new scales, at new tempos, in new places, with groups that not been able to organize before. When I wrote Smart Mobs in 2001, the technopolitical outbreaks I cited included the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle, where mobile-phone equipped protestors used swarming tactics to out-maneuver the, and the 2000 Manila "People Power II" demonstrations in that gave birth to the legend of "Generation TXT" and signaled the end of the Estrada regime. Since the book was published, however, the election of President Roh in South Korea, the emergence of the Howard Dean candidacy in the USA, the SMS-organized demonstrations in Madrid in the wake of the March 11, 2004 terrorist bombings (and on the eve of the election), are headline events. Less widely publicized but equally noteworthy as potential harbingers of a world-wide trend, elections in Kenya and Ghana were kept honest by monitors who used a network of mobile phones and radio stations; India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party uses SMS to maintain contact with the press and voters; in South Africa, SMS registration was part of the official voter registration process.”
The alphabet made empires and armies possible, the printing press made democracy and science possible; railroads and telephones, corporations and bureaucracies co-evolved. Now the fusion of the mobile telephone, the PC, and the Internet is beginning to make new forms of collective action possible on new scales, at new tempos, in new places, with groups that not been able to organize before. When I wrote Smart Mobs in 2001, the technopolitical outbreaks I cited included the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle, where mobile-phone equipped protestors used swarming tactics to out-maneuver the, and the 2000 Manila "People Power II" demonstrations in that gave birth to the legend of "Generation TXT" and signaled the end of the Estrada regime. Since the book was published, however, the election of President Roh in South Korea, the emergence of the Howard Dean candidacy in the USA, the SMS-organized demonstrations in Madrid in the wake of the March 11, 2004 terrorist bombings (and on the eve of the election), are headline events. Less widely publicized but equally noteworthy as potential harbingers of a world-wide trend, elections in Kenya and Ghana were kept honest by monitors who used a network of mobile phones and radio stations; India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party uses SMS to maintain contact with the press and voters; in South Africa, SMS registration was part of the official voter registration process.”
