Tag : Howard Rheingold

Last week, Howard “Smart Mobs” Rheingold came to give a talk here at Made by Many. It was a fascinating look at how smart mobs have functioned when given tools that are largely outside the authorities’ control, and some future gazing on how these phenomena might evolve over the medium term.

I don’t want to talk about smart mobs here, but rather to focus on one, perhaps throwaway, line that Howard used:

Greed helps innovation. Fear prevents it.

Aside from the rather unpleasant echo of Gordon Gekko which turned my stomach a little, my first reaction was that this is mistaken. I’ve given it some more thought and I’m even more convinced that greed is not the prime motivating force for innovation.

Has the future turned out the way it was supposed to?

That’s something we’re very interested in here at Made by Many, so we’ve invited world-renowned author and futurist Howard Rheingold to present an evaluation of the outcomes and predictions he made in the 2002 best-seller “Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution”.

Howard’s talk will be followed by an open discussion – I’m sure it will be a lively one! The event will appeal to anyone interested in new models of mass collaboration, crowd-sourcing and emergent intelligence that are made possible with the advent of ubiquitous social computing. We’ve only got a few free seats left, so if you’re interested, get in touch with me asap at elin@madebymany.co.uk and I will try to get you on the guest list.