[From PopTech] Dressed in a hippie’s idea of respectable – purple pants, multihued shirt, sun belt buckle, painted klogs – Rheingold eloquently makes the case that hopeful and unpredictable phenomena emerge from simple technology. His example is, of course, “smart mobs”: the social organization that springs up around cell-phone text messaging. Much hinges, he says, on the emergence of trust and mechanisms for managing reputations.

Rheingold ended by asking: Will those mobile technologies be shaped by users or will we be tuend back into consumers?

During the Q&A, he said that online is a great place for people to express themselves but a bad place to make decisions. He also said that rule-less places are fine, but some sites need rules, e.g., no personal attacks allowed. (Both points conform with my experience.)

Buzz Bruggeman just asked Rheingold if real-time blogging and other smart-mobbish behavior might have a chilling effect on things like conferences where bloggers are blogging while speakers are speaking. Howard’s response: “I would think it would have a chilling effect on bullshit.” Laughter and applause.

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