A calm and orderly flash mob descended on an otherwise chaotic Abbot Kinney today to protest against the continued incarceration of Aung San Suu Kyi, more on the protest here. Yup, those is posters designed by Shepard Fairey and churned out, no doubt by the good folks at SNO. By and large the poster-carriers were articulate in articulating the cause to curious passers by, which was it’s intent.

A lot has been written about technologies, such as Facebook Causes in bringing people together and rightly so, it’s an excellent platform. Fast forward to a world of rich profiles and location awareness. At what point does the cost of identifying and bringing together like-minds in a crowd become so low as to be deemed trivial? In what contexts will the process be sufficiently automated/rapid that a significant % of ‘mobsters will be unsure what they’re mobbing about? The equivalent of joining a Soviet era queue without knowing what’s at the end of the queue. Yup – with a bit of time-warp magic there’d be an app for that. And in a world of limited attention spans and a long list of causes – what are the tools that will allow Mob C to lo-jack Mob B to lo-jack Mob A?

Bring on the real-time.