Howard Rheingold, an early cyberspace guru, published his new book "Smart Mobs" one month ago. Since this time there's discussion on the web (and gladly also at the e_thnology-course in our institute) if the web is going wireless. Rheingold predicts, that the next revolution is the communication from everywhere at every time. There's some kind of introduction to the book at the online magazine edge. Then there's a interview with Rheingold about his book at Well.com, also an intellectual online magazine. Finally I stumbled across this Review at Mindjack.com, a magazine about internet culture. BTW, I don't think that there will be a revolution, simply because western society is not a mobile society. Who is not mobile doesn't need to go wireless. But I didn't read the book - so maybe I took him wrong here.

And last but not least: There is a possibility of going wireless in a special way, as Argentina is currently showing. Maybe Germany will also take this special way. We can forget about Rheingold then ...

A early technological prophecy And a last one: If we talk about technological predictions we have always to keep in mind, that a lot of former predicitions didn't come true. One of the funniest things predicting a wonderful future of a technological world is this movie (free download) from the world fair 1962, which was sponsored by AT&T. There is a permanently smiling couple which shows stunning futuristic features like the oven which you can switch off by telephone (this one is still predicted today, by the way). But some of the early ICT-Features predicted in the movie really came true, like "push button phoning".

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