Abstract:

The Internet has become not just a new type of communication for society, it is obvious that communications in virtual reality have tendency to objectification. Real life evolves in the virtual space.  New opportunities for communication, business and creativity provided by the Internet were understood and described by Howard Rheingold in his book Smart Mobs: The next social revolution [2002]. He predicted that development of network communications would change public habits. Putting together all the components: technical, economic and social ones – we get an infrastructure allowing human actions which were impossible before. Smart mob is becoming an important actor of social processes, which consists of people who are able to act in concert not knowing each other. Modern technologies are becoming an absolutely new information environment which will be used by the government and corporations to control our habits and creeds on a scale larger than it was possible before the advent of the Internet. However, citizens will also find new opportunities to unite and resist to government institutions. The question is how everything will go and if these technologies will be used as an instrument of social control or protest?