The Wiki Man: Technology and the riots

It was the biggest technological story of the month and I missed it. Instead it was my much cooler friend, Jonathan Akwue, who first mentioned Blackberry Messenger and its possible connection with the riots (at urbanmashup.wordpress.com). He spent the next two weeks fielding inquiries from the media.

Blackberry Messenger (or BBM, as its users call it) is an application unique to Blackberry handsets, which allows users to message each other in a way similar to text messaging, yet to larger groups and at lower cost. On its own, it has earned the Blackberry, once exclusively a businessman’s handset, a huge following among the young. (Blackberry has in the process become one of those interesting brands with two entirely disparate groups of customers, like Burberry a few years ago.)

Did BBM cause the riots, as some suggested? No. All the same, it is one of many developments that should lead us to expect volatility in the years ahead — especially as other handset-makers are developing equivalents. Why? Because highly interconnected networks of people (or banks, for that matter) are inevitably unpredictable. Just as we should no longer be surprised when the confiscation of a set of fruit scales in Sidi Bouzid leads to the fall of the Tunisian government, we should be ready when attacks on the police in Tottenham mutate into looting in Croydon. (In this case, police tactics designed to defuse the original problem were wholly unsuited to tackling the mutation).
Anyhow, not having a BlackBerry myself, I had abandoned earlier plans to assemble a party of Spectator readers to ram-raid Berry Bros & Rudd, and spent the evenings of the riots reading the online commentary. This was, in itself, quite rewarding. There was the bafflement of Americans at the small part firearms played in the violence.