Excerpt from Thresholds, 29: Inversions
Perhaps the first and the last New York mobs organized by Bill (he gives no surname in interviews) point to the negative and positive potentials of the flash mob. The first mob Bill at tempted to organize, before his success at Macy's, ended with police, informed by a recipient of the initial email, preventing participants from entering the planned location. Many other potential flash mobs across the world have been barred by the police; one, in a Prague supermarket, ended in the brutal beating of a photographer by security guards. It seems that the inherently political nature of the inexplicable mob is also inherently distressing to authorities. There is something sub versive about the flash mob which seems bound to incite the authorities to respond: even when the intentions are obviously playful and harmless, the spontaneous mass gathering is by its nature threatening to the state apparatus. The capacity of digi tal technology to allow for easy coordination of large groups of people is a benefit both to institutions and individuals: yet. Because this power is now much more accessible to individu als than it has been in the past, it also threatens the role of the institution in society. Perhaps this is the root cause for the desire of state authorities to control these personal networks when they make an appearance in physical space.
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Thresholds, 29
