Follow the crowd: Tom Vanderbilt on new-model flash mobs.(On Site)

IN AN OBSCURE 1973 STORY titled "Flash Crowd," the science-fiction writer Larry Niven describes how an argument at a shopping mall, which happened to be covered by a news crew, swells into a riot. The broadcast riot in turn attracts the attention of other people, who use the widely available technology of the teleportation booth to swarm first that event--thus intensifying the riot--and then other breaking events. One character in Niven's story, articulating the police view, says, "We call them flash crowds, and we watch for them."

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