New configurations of identity in Web 2.0 environment

Howard Rheingold, leading thinker and writer on the social implications of technology, has travelled to many different places looking for emerging trends in computing, communication and society. In the conversation he talks about how technology has influenced and changed communication between people and also the concept of communication itself. He explains the different uses and possibilities of virtual communities, wikies and weblogs, how people use them today to create links between their interests, intentions and projects, and how people show their personalities in the Internet relationship context. But he thinks that the Internet is not the only communication technology revolution, as mobile phones are also really getting deeply inside society. Howard invented the term Smart Mobs to describe groups of people who use mobile phones to organise collective actions. We can find a lot of writings, books and articles by Rheingold since the 80s. In 1984 he started writing about computers as mind-amplifiers with Tools for Thoughts . Later he wrote Virtual Reality (1991), about the world of artificial experience, and also in 1993 he published the book The Virtual Community where he focused on new communication media. Later on, in 2002 he published his latest work Smart Mobs about the phenomenon of new mobile phone technology culture and how it influences so many events that happen in society.

Watch the video interview [YouTube - 19 min]