I can see some very important relationships between the two pieces of this week. In my opinion, from Fuller’s hard advocacy of “Fordism” in human residence to the mobs, influenced by digital technology, described by Rheingold, one of the most important issues of technology is its interaction with human social and individual behavior.

Buckminster Fuller, in his article is explaining economical profits of mass production houses in the very unique way of production that he proposed. He also criticize “Architect’s trained in beaux-arty-rococo” who are “secure in their stronghold of aesthetic nonsense” to defend old methods of design of the houses. Then, he also suggests two more obstacles in the way of what he called scientific housing. Those two obstacles can be discussed as economical motivations of housing investor bodies which also cause many financial problems during these years; banks, sub-prime mortgages, etc. despite the huge amount of incentives for investing on land and property, I think that the psychological senses of belonging to a space as well as have a unique place to call home are the main obstacles in the way of mass production of houses. Logically, it’s acceptable that there are more benefits in mass producing houses in the way described by Fuller but the fact that people earn their identity from their homes is undeniable.

This may be described as influences of psychology and human behavior on technology and development, while the other piece shows many influences that technology has on human social behavior. The point which is very interesting to me is that the author tried to model mobs as systems with individuals as nods and relations as connections. He exemplified with ants that “leave chemical trail markers” which are obviously a sort of information. The main analysis is that how information technology affects the mobs and movements; from wearable computers, SMS and social media to p2p journalism. And a very clever question is that how they are changing our history in terms of power, when we look to historical, turning-point movements and imagine how things would be different if in May, 1968 in Paris, people could send texts or in November, 1989 in Berlin they could tweet.

PS: Just for your imagination: Paris Berlin