Public gathering spaces offer the most unique places for formation. ‘Entr’acte’ exemplifies public space being about the spectator masses. Its interesting to look at how space functions as a public gathering space. Typically, there are large spaces designed for gathering, however, a space can become a public space by the amount of people active within that space.

Public space to me is probably some of my favorites within design. A large gathering area should be designed for small to large human interaction. We can look at instances of formation or larger formations. Smart mobs begin to illustrate how theses formations occur. Through technology of communication and computing, a mob can be created through a new method of formation. This is only relevant though to people interesting in creating a mob. I think the creation of mobs offer a unique input on how to fill a public space, but I feel there is a disconnect of relationships within a mob. There might be a driving factor to how a mob forms, but it only forms from strangers meeting strangers. Crowds have a diverse background and that background has multiple motives to form a mob. Integrating technology helps form a more cohesive mob, but at the end of the day you still are a stranger within a collective of people

The person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it!

-K in Men in Black
The idea of swarm intelligence is a fascinating conundrum, an intersection between the individual agent and its relation to the greater whole, but I guess the validity of the greater whole is dependent on the formation of a crowd vs a mob. In any case, what I find of particular interest in not the relationship of the agent to the system in its most utopian sense, but of the physicality that allows for the creation of this relationship. While cell-phones may have decentralized modes of communication to break free from government interference, the physicality of these supposed wireless networks still maintain a territorial bounds restricted to those who seek to exploit the information translated through their networks for economic gain.

The articles ‘Smart Mobs’ and ‘Crowd and Power’ were distinguishing as to mobs and crowds. What could effectively be called as a mob or crowd is the intriguing question that arose. Mobs can demonstrate various traits like the one that is either formed out of strength or out of fear or maybe just come in collectively to seek comfort. Smart mobs rather are the produce of smart communication and computing technologies brought in together. The impacts of such smart mobs are operative or sometimes also destructive. Effective communication through ubiquitous computing form large groups of people which can be called as smart mob. Crowds thereby is just a gathering of people with seeking of same one intention. Smart mobs could be well illustrated with today’s social networking which brings in people together, to raise their voices and join in a common cause through the medium of internet.

In the essay ‘Entr’acte’ by Jordon Geiger points out the various ways of formation of public spaces. Public spaces is about the spectator masses. Certain protests or workshops or events sometimes bring in the idea of place-making meaning they encourage gathering of people which could be the participants, actors or mere spectators. It causes a collaborative public interaction may it be physical or visual. In ‘The social life of public spaces’, Whyte extensively focuses on observing people in public squares or just road junctions. The point he is trying to imply is that certain spaces become public spaces by just sheer presence of people even if they are not part of any activity, they are onlookers. I would like to apprehend public spaces as just environments where people come in, might stay or watch and leave but they still happen to intermingle with the environment in the meanwhile. Such visual and physical interactions are enough for spread of word, exchange of thoughts or peer to peer interaction and hence can be underlined as Public Spaces in the aspect of social life.

A smart mob could be defined as a group of people performing some unusual behavior than usual, behavior that is intelligent and/or efficient emerged out of technology and network links, enabling people to connect to information and others, to perform a task allowing a form of social coordination. These growing technologies include the Internet, computer-mediated communication such as Internet Relay Chat, and wireless devices like mobile phones and personal digital assistants. Some of the factors like curiosity, fear, comfort, strength play a vital role in creation of smart mob. The impacts of smart mob technology could be both beneficial and destructive. However, it is interesting to notice that how the technology is influencing the use of the space by smart mob. The ‘MP3 Experiment by Improv Everywhere’ is a good example to understand the above statement. In the MP3 experiment one can observe that the mob is the organized gathering by digital media.

Also it is interesting to think on the question that ‘how will you define yourself in a public space?’ In my opinion, it’s not you but you intention of going to any public space could possibly define you in that space. It could also define you as an actor or a spectator of that space. Let’s consider one example where a public workshop of some sort is happening is a public space. In my view that their internal coordination is so tight that people around who are totally clueless about the activities would feel awkward to interact with the mob to understand what is going on. They would just stay in the background as a spectator or observer. Their observation period is affected by their schedule, surrounding architecture, whether etc. Again, this can be very well observed in the MP3 experiment. The point I want to make it here is, such ‘workshops’ do not necessarily create social or public interactions. Both the articles, ‘The next social revolution by Howard Rheingold and Entr’acte by Jordan Geigar’ talk more in depth about the smart mob and public space formation with new growing technologies.

In the article “The Real Social Life of Wireless Public Spaces”, Anthony Townsend discusses how he and his colleagues at NYCwireless had been doing experiments to see how wireless connectivity in public spaces affects the people within the space, and the space itself. He briefly mentions how wireless connectivity and Facebook, in particular, have greatly expanded our weak social ties. By “weak social ties” Townsend means that the ability to keep in contact or even meet new people is at a reduced level. He suggests that by incorporating wireless networks into area allows for greater levels of social ties. However, I would argue the opposite. Social media like Facebook does not encourage the idea of creating strong social ties. How many of your “friends” on Facebook do you actually keep in contact with? Maybe 10% or less… Townsend states that 79% of people visiting Bryant Park come alone and stay alone. How does the introduction of wireless connectivity then create strong social ties? To me, the best thing about social media besides being able to quickly communicate with others is its ability to organize events with large numbers of people quickly. Perhaps this is the best aspect of creating socially interactive wireless connections.

Mobs have a very particular mentality and characteristic to it. Whenever one is a part of a crowd or a mob, their mentality, goals, and personality changes some what. It was discussed in Elias Canetti’s text Crowd and Power, how a man’s main fear is being touched, whether if they’re outside in the broad daylight or in a dark empty room, being touched by a foreign matter is terrifying. The mere fact that you don’t know what is touching you and that “even clothes give insufficient security…It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite.” When in a crowd, all sense of the fear of being touched is usually lost. You’re surrounded by people who most likely have the same mentality as you or at least the same goal. “The more fiercely people press together, the more certain they feel that they do not fear each other”. That moment when man feels at one with the crowd, when the fear is lost is called discharge.

The people that surround you and give you that “safe” feeling is all a part of this enviornment that the crowd is taking place in. The space that they occupy play an important role in the crowd’s characteristics. The space can predetermine whether or not the crowd is going to be an open crowd or a closed crowd, it determines if it is domesticated or destructive.

“Power of crowd this comes across in its capacity to overwhelm physical constraints of urban planning… By provoking a sense of estrangement.” In the text Smart Mobs: The Power of the a mobile Many, from Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold discusses how Smart mobs, using semiotic technology to collaborate organizations and disseminate information which turns jokes and slang into having potential to reform socio-political actions. Architecturally, the tie between the networked Internet messaging and open public spaces is the freedoms of public domain. In these public spaces “Netwars” can occur which perpetrator use networked technologies to spread forms of rules or propaganda using tactics such as swarming and dispersement either publicly or autonomously. Smart mobile devices in Netwars create a network similar to a broadcasting or cellular network of signals and receptors, where peer to peer communication has the ability to be shared through a ad hoc social network that is temporal and in the moment. As quickly as it can be functional it can shift or reorganize based on real-time reactions. Specifically technologies such as Bluetooth and NFC can transmit information invisibly to operate a physical grouping or mass. This mob therefore is designed to not only communicate events and times, but chronologies moments to document collective cooperation.

This notion of the migration from permanent and fixed computing to mobile and transient computing has affect perceptions of public open spaces is also reflected in the text of Jordan Geiger in Entr’acte. He describes time-sensitivity, in the now, creation of new spaces and durations of time through temporal communications in technology. The people behind of operations then become activists according to Geiger through mobile networked communication and “technologies of cooperation”. The people that are therefore organized are anti-hierarchical and unpredictable which begins a process of permeation into the public. By blurring the boundaries between seen and being seen the concept of “immersion” creates collaborative spectatorship can a new dimension of space-time relationships.

Lastly in the article The Real Social Life of Wireless Public Spaces by Anthony Townsend, there is a focus on social media and wireless technologies expanding our social relationships between neighbors and proximate people. Exposure online and reactions offline increases social diversity and communications of different groups of people. Through a study of the NYCwireless project in Bryant Park in New York City, Townsend’s narrative becomes a critique of transforming ways governments and institutions over look the evolution of mobs and technologies. His main argument is that the park wireless connection is too exclusive with only allowing for a temporal social media to occur if you are within the boundaries of the park. Townsend argues that this boundary is not successful because the interactions happen largely before entering the park, they occur before hand on social media or as people are coming into or leave the park. Once the user is in the park there often times is already the communication infrastructure in place for the interaction to occur successfully. Therefore he offers that using the idea of mobile messaging and mob communications outside and inside the boundaries of Bryant Park can create a network of people to communicate and organize which accomplishes the mission of messaging people to a single location with a common offline goal of gathering.