Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold had an idea: wireless communications changes the way people live. “Smart Mobs” (”mobs” for “groups of people” and “mobiles”) is the result of his investigation of that concept. He interviewed researchers and users from Tokyo to Scandinavia, looking into mobile communication’s effects on everything from teen social habits to Phillipine politics. He mentions cell phones, text messaging, wearable computers, location-sensitive devices, and more.
Rheingold’s writing is both thoughtful and thought-provoking, colloquial and well-researched. His subject is still developing, so reaches no definite conclusions. The technology can lead to good and ill, liberty and repression. The reader is left thinking that life really is different in the 21st century.