The new generation of mobile phones users have become more than simply talkers. With the onset of new technological advances, including peer to peer methods and computer-pervaded environments, it is becoming increasingly possible for groups of people to organise and coordinate collective actions on a scale never before imagined. Talk has turned to action.

Consider the following cases in point where mobile phone technology has amplified cooperative human efforts on a scale not historically seen before.

- A million Filipinos toppled President Estrada through public demonstrations organised through salvos of text messages. - Mobile phones were used by protesters at the 1999 World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle to coordinate the demonstrations, and outwit the centralised radio system of the police. - In May 2004, the human rights organisation Fahuma launched the first continent-wide campaign using SMS test messages in Africa as part of a campaign that involved sending electronic petitions.

Howard Rheingold is one of the world