'Flash Mobs' Use Tech to Gather for Fun

July 18 -- In this week's Cybershake, we note how technology is helping to create "flash mobs" — spontaneous gatherings where participants perform silly tasks and then move on. Plus, we take a look at a new TV that keeps an eye out for important news.

Mobs Make Mild-Mannered Merriment

They weren't chanting or protesting, and Godzilla was nowhere in sight.

So why did a mob of more than 200 New Yorkers converge on an upscale SoHo shoe store Wednesday evening?

One member's rationale: "Humor. Pure humor."

The "flash mob" was the fourth in Manhattan in the past several weeks, and was organized through e-mail and the Internet. The objective is to have a large mass of people converge on a location for as little as 15 seconds or as long as 15 minutes. Participants then perform a task or act out a scenario, and quickly withdraw into obscurity.

The detailed instructions participants received electronically prior to this event told them to meet at local bars and wait for further directions on exactly where to be, at what time.

"You synchronize your watch [with the U.S. Atomic Clock], and I'm like half a second off, and then you go for it," one woman explained. "You come here at 7:00, depart at 7:18, and you're there by 7:23. It's so silly!"

Most of the crowd seemed to be young, hip, middle-class New Yorkers. But during the short five minutes the mob was in the shoe store, the instruction sheet told them: "You are on a bus tour from Maryland. You are excited but also bewildered. It is as if the shoes were made in outer space.

"If you have a cell phone, dial a friend. Say, 'Guess where I am.' After a pause, say, 'In a SoHo shoe store.' Or, 'In one of those New York City Mobs.' "

This particular trend started in New York, but excited Internet-users around the country are organizing their own mobs.

A Web site (www.cheesebikini.com) that documents flash mobs reported that two hours after the event in Manhattan, San Franciscans converged on a busy Market Street intersection, and spun in circles while walking back and forth across the street. Ten minutes later, the participants had melted back into the crowd.