Plans for two upcoming flash mobs have been announced.

Wake up, London, Tokyo and San Francisco. New York already scooped you on this; will you let Minneapolis beat you to the punch?

A group in Minneapolis is planning that city’s first flash mob ever, to take place July 22 at 6:25 pm. For more details visit the new Minneapolis mob homepage. (Thanks for the tip, Minneapolis Mob.)

New Yorkers are planning a third Gotham flash mob to begin July 2 at 7:04 pm; I’ve pasted the event announcement below, as it was e-mailed to cheesebikini. (Thanks for the tip, MOB project.)

Mob safely.

(If you’re wondering what a flash mob is, see this entry for an explanation.)

Here's the announcement for the next New York event:

Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 21:45:21 -0700 (PDT) From: The Mob Project To: themobproject@yahoo.com Subject: MOB #3

(Apologies to those who received an incomplete version
before.)

You are invited to take part in MOB, the project that
creates an inexplicable mob of people in New York City
for ten minutes or less. Please forward this to other
people you know who might like to join.

FAQ

Q. For a mob to be inexplicable, does it need to take
place in an otherwise empty space?

A. No.

INSTRUCTIONS - MOB #3: THE GRAND CENTRAL MOB BALLET
Location: Grand Central Terminal
Start time: Wednesday, July 2nd, 7:04 pm
Duration: less than 10 minutes

(1) During the day on July 2nd:
(a) Synchronize your watch to
http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Eastern/d/-5/java/java.
(If that site doesn^Òt work for you, try
http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Eastern/d/-5.)
(b) On the front of a $1 bill, write the word
"MOB" over the word "ONE" on the right-hand side. If
you are concerned about the legality of this, write in
pencil. Keep the $1 bill handy.
(c) Wear comfortable shoes.

(2) Arrive at Grand Central by 6:45 pm. By then,
representatives of the MOB will have stationed
themselves in or near the downstairs food court. They
will all be reading The New York Review of Books.
(NOTE: the covers of their copies might not be
visible. Please familiarize yourself with the fonts
and layout of that periodical before arriving at the
MOB.)

(3) Based on the month of your birth, specify one of
the following letters to the MOB representative:
A: January through April
B: May through August
C: September through December
You will be given a slip on which further instructions
will be printed. This slip is your "travel itinerary"
and may be consulted in public.

(4) MOB #3 consists of a series of short mobs. The
first will begin at 7:04. You may place yourself at
the MOB site up to two minutes beforehand -- i.e.,
anytime after 7:02. NO ONE SHOULD ARRIVE AT THE FIRST
MOB SITE UNTIL 7:01.

(5) Unlike in MOB #2, you do not know each other. Do
not speak to anyone, including other MOB participants.
If you are asked a question, limit your responses to
one of the following:

* "I am looking for my train"
* "I think these people may be taking the same train I
am"
* "My train is supposed to leave from down here"
* "When I saw all these people come down here, I
figured I should too"
* "I am taking a train to [suburban town] to visit my
[relative]"
* "I am taking a train to a mob"

(6) Based on the itinerary, the MOB will end and you
will disperse. NO ONE SHOULD REMAIN AT THE MOB SITE
MORE THAN TWO MINUTES AFTER THE MOB IS OVER.

(7) Return to what you would otherwise have been
doing. Await instructions for MOB #4.

George Orwell Centenary Festival

Today, on the 100th anniversary of George Orwell's birth, his masterpieces really are more important to us than ever.

If you live near San Francisco, come out for the George Orwell Centenary Festival at Edinburgh Castle in San Francisco. The festival runs tonight, tomorrow night and Saturday night. It includes readings from Orwell's most important works, film screenings, and "Free Victory Gin."

Show up tonight and tell them "cheesebikini is doubleplusgood." You'll get free admission to the Thursday and Saturday night shows; normal cover charge for those shows will be $6 and $7 respectively. And remember: four legs good, two legs bad.

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June 21, 2003

Guerilla Cafe DJ

I want to be a guerilla cafe DJ.

Here's what I need: a small, portable FM transmitter powerful enough to override the signal in any cafe that's playing megacorporate radio. This would be especially useful in cafes tuned in to that unbearable Clear Channel snooze-jazz station that has infected so many San Francisco Wi-Fi cafes.

When I enter a cafe and power up my laptop, I'd like to plug this magic transmitter box into my laptop and use it to overpower the cafe radio's reception of that cheesy station, replacing it with whatever music is emerging at the moment from my laptop's sound card.

If you know where I can obtain such a device, please clue me in.

(If you know who created the power-tower graphic above, please let me know so I can give them credit. I pulled this image from the Web a long time ago and I can't remember where it came from.)

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June 19, 2003

"Matrix" Mobs Take Japan

Swarms of people dressed as Agent Smith converged in Tokyo and Osaka this week, following the Japan premiere of "The Matrix: Reloaded." (The movie features hundreds of clones of the character Agent Smith.)

They even reenacted fight scenes from the movie. This looks almost as scary as a Star Wars opening night in Silicon Valley.

Photo courtesy of rottentomatoes.com, where you'll find more photos and video clips. Thanks to chanpon.org for the tip.

UPDATE: Xaky from rotten tomatoes reports that a new, bigger Matrix mob event will take place in Tokyo Sunday, June 29. If you want to participate, see details here.

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June 18, 2003

Twenty-First Century Transcontinental Love

The First International Moblogging Love Hotel Conference:
Just remember, it's not about the sex.

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June 17, 2003

Manhattan Flash Mob Photos

Here's photographic evidence of the flash mob's successful takeover of the Manhattan Macy's fancy-rug department, courtesy of moistandtasty.com (above). Visit that site, as well as Satan's Laundromat, for more photos.

New Yorkers used e-mail to coordinate a huge, instant gathering of people around a particular rug. Participants were instructed to tell questioning salesmen that they all lived together in a warehouse in Queens, and they were considering purchasing the item for use as a "Love Rug" back at the house. After precisely ten minutes the crowd dissipated.

UPDATE: This week's edition of National Public Radio's All Things Considered included a segment about the flash mob. (Thanks to Mike from Satan's Laundromat for yet another tip.)

UPDATE: Here's a look back at the event from Wired News. (Thanks for the tip, Mike.)

UPDATE: Here's another money shot of the salesman, from ephemeroi.com.

Do you have photos from the event? How about video or audio? Please link to your coverage in the comments below.

(For background information, see the first flash mob post.)

 

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The War on CapsLock

In no way do I condone or encourage the development of pernicious new club drugs.

But assuming that humans will keep inventing new ways to poison themselves, it might be funny to give the next big drug the street name “CapsLock.”

As in: “Can you believe those five kids in Microsoft Butterfly suits shattered all the windows in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and then swallowed half of the stained glass shards before the cops and paramedics arrived? They must have been amped up on CapsLock.”

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June 16, 2003

Flash Mobs Take Manhattan

Our senior Manhattan correspondent David Danzig reports that New Yorkers are using e-mail to coordinate "inexplicable mobs" — huge crowds that materialize in public places and suddenly dissipate 10 minutes later.

Below I've pasted the e-mail announcement for the next mob, scheduled to take place Tuesday, June 17, 2003.

UPDATE: Be sure not to miss the photos of the event.

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Publish or Perish

The good news: A version of my column "How to Fix an Election" appeared this month in the Association for Computing Machinery's SIGCHI Bulletin. (I wrote the original version for the general public; I rewrote this newer version to target readers in the Human Computer Interactions industry).

This was not an academic paper. But still it's my first publication in an HCI periodical. Hooray.

The bad news: I submitted the essay (and posted the original on cheesebikini) nine months ago. That was just after the second Florida election fiasco, which the essay addresses. Now the Florida elections are old news. But the essay's points still hold true.

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June 12, 2003

Illegal Art

Illegal Art is coming to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Artist Gallery at Fort Mason next month (July 2 through July 25).

Yum. I can hardly wait.

From the exhibition Web site:

...copyright was originally intended to facilitate the exchange of ideas but is now being used to stifle it.

The Illegal Art Exhibit will celebrate what is rapidly becoming the "degenerate art" of a corporate age: art and ideas on the legal fringes of intellectual property. Some of the pieces in the show have eluded lawyers; others have had to appear in court.

Loaded with gray areas, intellectual property law inevitably has a silencing effect, discouraging the creation of new works.

The last time I was at Fort Mason, a security guard kicked me out for photographing portions of the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit which I pieced together that afternoon in my own bit of illegal art.

(By the way -- we were good tenants; we were evicted because the house was sold and the new owner was moving in.)

UPDATE: Here's an intriguing column that reflects Creative Commons' take on this exhibit.

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June 02, 2003

So Long Travis

Wherever you are now, I know you're not taking any shit.

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June 01, 2003

Stick It to Safeway

Stop using your Safeway Club Card. Use mine instead.

Safeway is one of those monstrous inescapable inhuman supermarket chains that saturates a regional market, peddling overpriced Frankenfood and driving smaller local merchants out of business.

One of Safeway's more deceptive tactics is to raise overall prices while providing slightly lower prices to those consumers who agree to use a "Safeway Club Card."

Safeway expects you to divulge a home address, a birth date and a bunch of other information in return for a card. If you want to avoid paying the highest prices you're supposed to present that card every time you shop at Safeway, so the company can monitor and store your whereabouts and your purchase patterns.

In short: Safeway uses deception to extract an ongoing stream of private and personal information from shoppers, while providing nothing but smoke in return. Safeway marketing drones disguise this swindle as a selling point, as a humanitarian service that Safeway provides to the public out of kindness.

Don't accept this abuse. Jam Safeway's customer surveillance system.

One way to do this: throw out your card and use mine instead. Safeway doesn't demand that you slide your card through the scanner; instead you can just enter your Club Card number (which is the same as your telephone number) at checkout. So write down my card number, and the next time you go to Safeway, type it in at checkout: 408-354-0579.

Tell your friends to do the same. That will hopelessly jumble together our purchase data and restore a bit of our privacy. Choke on that, fascist Safeway wonks.

What if you don't live in Safeway's shadow? Then join forces with your friends; use this strategy to protect your privacy from whatever giant card-wielding supermarket chain dominates your neighborhood.

For more about megacorporate "loyalty card" scams, visit nocards.org.

DISCLAIMER: Safeway occasionally sends piddling discount coupons and the like to cardholders. I'm not doing this as a scheme to get coupons. If I receive more than $5 worth of benefits (coupons that I actually use, or free bottle openers or anything) within six months, I'll donate that amount of money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If you don't want to use my card number at all, just use your own card with your friends and neighbors.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, someone else is way ahead of me. Rob at cockeyed.com not only offers to let you use his Safeway card, he scanned the UPC code from his card and he printed it on stickers. He'll send a UPC sticker to you so that you can stick it on your own card, effectively making your card a clone of his. NOTE: This isn't necessary because Safeway will let you just type in your phone number instead of swiping a card. But more power to Rob.

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