What Is a Flash Crowd? By Brain (Organiser of the Hull Flash Crowd)

In 1973 Larry Niven wrote as short story called Flash Crowd. In which society had access to cheap teleportation systems. Thus the consequences of almost free and instantaneous teleportation booths, was what became known as a flash crowd. The result of which being huge crowds turning up at major events, or interesting news stories. All materializing instantly, within milliseconds, and without warning. It has been pointed out however that the effect was anticipated years earlier in Alfred Bester's 1956 The Stars My Destination.

One consequence, not predicted by the builders of the system, was that with the almost instantaneous reporting of newsworthy events, tens of thousands of people worldwide would flock to the scene of anything interesting - along with criminals, hoping to exploit the instant disorder and confusion so created.

On the World Wide Web, a similar phenomenon can occur, when some web site catches the attention of a large number of people, and gets an unexpected and overloading surge of traffic: a notorious example is the Slashdot effect.

A Flash Mob as it is termed in America, where the phenomenon originated in June 2003, is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place as a prank. People gradually became aware, through the internet, of an event called the "Mob Project", planned for New York. After meeting in four pre-arranged Manhattan bars, further instructions were issued and a group of roughly 100 people converged upon the 9th floor rug department of Macy's store, gathering around one particular rug. Anyone approached by a sales assistant was advised to say that the gatherers lived together in a warehouse on the outskirts of New York, and that they were looking for a Love Rug to play on.

A second mob was organized at Grand Central station, where police advised gatherers to relocate to the mezzanine of the Grand Hyatt hotel. There the mob erupted into spontaneous applause for a period of 15 seconds, where after the mob dispersed as quickly as it had appeared. This rapid convergence, followed by an equally swift disappearance has become a staple of the flash mob/crowd phenomenon.

Flash Crowd events quickly spread to Asia, and by August 2003 to Europe and the United Kingdom.

There's a Flash Crowd starting in Hull. If you want to be part of this new phenomenon, then contact... hullflashcrowd@yahoo.co.uk

Text originally appeared on the Hull Flash Crowd website

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