An inno­v­a­tive use of motion sen­sors and a famil­iar video game encour­ages coor­di­nated action on the part of oth­er­wise non-connected individuals.

I’ve been look­ing into crowds and mobs, seek­ing to iden­tify ele­ments com­mon to pos­i­tive large-group expe­ri­ences. This week, I picked up Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy,” look­ing for answers.

During truly ecsta­tic events, par­tic­i­pants have the sen­sa­tion of merg­ing with the group, becom­ing part of a larger whole, and hav­ing the “expe­ri­ence of self-loss in the crowd.” With the tem­po­rary loss of indi­vid­ual iden­tity comes the tem­po­rary loss of indi­vid­ual respon­si­bil­ity. Inhibitions are low­ered and moral judge­ment may be impaired, since “the crowd” acts as one force. This explains how ordi­nary, gen­er­ally moral peo­ple can riot, and how straight-laced con­ser­v­a­tives can let it all hang out at Mardi Gras. (Yes, alco­hol plays a role, too, accel­er­at­ing the low­er­ing of inhi­bi­tions and an increased sense of con­nec­tion with others.)

Ehrenreich observes that instances of col­lec­tive ecstasy are very much non-hierarchical:

Hierarchy, by its nature, estab­lishes bound­aries between people--who can go where, who can approach whom, who is wel­come, and who is not. Festivity breaks the bound­aries down. …

While hier­ar­chy is about exclu­sion, fes­tiv­ity gen­er­ates inclu­sive­ness. The music invites every­one to dance; shared food briefly under­mines the priv­i­lege of class. … At the height of the fes­tiv­ity, we step out of our assigned roles and statuses--of gen­der, eth­nic­ity, tribe, and rank--and into a brief utopia defined by egal­i­tar­i­an­ism, cre­ativ­ity, and mutual love.

Ehrenreich refers to our mod­ern era as the “post­fes­tive” era, since cen­turies of hier­ar­chi­cal civ­i­liza­tion have all but elim­i­nated the class-undermining expres­sions of par­tic­i­pa­tory joy that threaten it.

Given that, how can we design expe­ri­ences of col­lec­tive joy for a post­fes­tive people?

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that yesterday’s 5-years-in-Iraq protest was well-orchestrated, in part thanks to fre­quent updates deliv­ered to par­tic­i­pants via text mes­sages. C.W. Nevius reports:

I was told to sim­ply text mes­sage the “DASW [Direct Action to Stop the War] text mob” to get up-to-the-minute mes­sages describ­ing the lat­est action sent to my cell phone. At 3:08:29 p.m., for exam­ple, I received a mes­sage that said, “DASW cur­rent esti­mate - 150 arrests - thanks for tak­ing to the streets and join­ing in.”

This is the first time I’ve heard of a small, local activist group (Bay Area DASW) employ­ing SMS to help keep their par­tic­i­pants in the loop. It’s a great idea, and could shift the dynamic of other direct actions in the future. Protests can be intense and a lit­tle scary when you see hordes of activists run­ning up against walls of police -- “What’s going on down there?” “Is every­one okay?” Panic breaks out when indi­vid­u­als can’t see over the crowd to get the big­ger pic­ture. “Are we safe here?” “Should we keep march­ing, or turn back?” A cen­tral­ized orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee, armed with binoc­u­lars and mobiles, can now mon­i­tor the protest sta­tus among them­selves, send­ing only per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion about the big pic­ture to par­tic­i­pants, such as num­ber of arrests, or “look out, tear gas deployed, head SW on Market.”

As part of my research, I’m look­ing into the psy­chol­ogy of crowds, and what makes some “crowd” expe­ri­ences pos­i­tive, and oth­ers neg­a­tive. I had an expe­ri­ence recently that Joe sug­gested I doc­u­ment here.

In line at Boston Logan, I waited impa­tiently with hun­dreds of other peo­ple, brac­ing myself for the mad rush that hap­pens just before and after the metal detec­tor. You used to be able to put your bags on the con­veyor belt and walk through, but now get­ting through secu­rity involves no fewer than 13 sep­a­rate steps, depend­ing on how you count them:

1. Remove any liq­uids and lap­tops from your luggage.
2. Place your lug­gage on the con­veyor belt.
3. Place your lap­top on the con­veyor belt, in its own bin.
4. Remove your shoes.
5. Remove your jacket.
6. Remove your belt (if any) and empty your pock­ets of every­thing -- wal­let, keys, change -- except for your board­ing pass! You will need that in a moment.
7. Place your shoes, jacket, belt, and pocket con­tents in a bin on the con­veyor belt.
8. Add to that bin a small plas­tic, reseal­able bag which con­tains any liq­uids or lotions that you want to take on the plane with you. Oh, and of those items, not one may exceed 3 fluid ounces. (Note that this step requires exten­sive prepa­ra­tion prior to arriv­ing at the airport.)
9. Wait until a TSA agent gives you a blank stare, which is your indi­ca­tion to pro­ceed through the metal detector.
10. Get scolded by the TSA agent for not hold­ing on to your board­ing pass, as instructed in step 6.
11. Deflect nasty looks given to you by the 8,000 trav­el­ers in line behind you as every­one waits for your board­ing pass to be retrieved from the gray bin.
12. TSA agent now allows you to pass, hav­ing ver­i­fied that you are in pos­ses­sion of a lit­tle scrap of paper that any 5-year-old could have mocked up in MacPaint.
13. Collect all your belong­ings, repack your bag, apply anti-fungal foot cream (aerosol vari­eties pro­hib­ited), get dressed in front of strangers who now hate you, and pro­ceed to gate.

That would be stress­ful enough. But add to it gen­eral anx­i­ety about flight, lack of decent food, sleep, hydra­tion, and other phys­i­cal and emo­tional stresses asso­ci­ated with travel, and most people’s gen­eral mood at this point, in the secu­rity line, is one of unpleas­ant anticipation.

So I’m back at Logan, it’s early, and I just want to make sure I don’t miss my flight. I have pre­pared for all 13 steps the night before. My lotions, liq­uids and gels are appor­tioned and sealed. My shoes are untied, ready for instant slip-off. I’m try­ing not to make eye con­tact with any­one, assum­ing they all feel the same way -- grumpy and dis­tressed -- but it turns out they don’t.

I only know that because Mr. TSA him­self decided we needed a lit­tle refresher course. He approaches, walk­ing along­side us, lift­ing a num­ber of large bot­tles of ver­boten sham­poos and sun­tan lotion into the air. He is lit­er­ally yelling: “THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOUR LIQUIDS. YOU MUST PUT ALL YOUR LIQUIDS INTO A SMALL PLASTIC BAG.” He is five feet away from my face and yelling directly into it. The cor­ri­dor is about 20 feet wide; I think he could use his indoor voice and com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively. But he con­tin­ues down the line, hit­ting all 13 items on our to-do lists at full volume.

Finally, hav­ing reached the last pas­sen­ger, he shuts up, turns around, and starts head­ing back to his post. And that’s when the hor­rif­i­cally mag­i­cal moment hap­pened: Someone said “thank you.” Thank you! This ver­bally abu­sive author­ity fig­ure has, in my eyes, been noth­ing but rude, obnox­ious, and insult­ing, lec­tur­ing us about things that we should already know. But some­one thanked him for what I inter­preted as abuse. And then another per­son thanked him. And another. And soon, once about ten peo­ple had said “thank you,” he felt oblig­ated to respond with “you’re welcome.”

Did this peo­ple think he was doing them a favor? Did they think he was a hero? Have TSA agents been ele­vated to the myth­i­cal level of fire­fight­ers and first respon­ders? “You can do no wrong. You are keep­ing our coun­try safe. Thank you for everything.”

It was fas­ci­nat­ing to me that any­one would respond this way, and that after the first “thank you,” that oth­ers fol­lowed. What does that say about the crowd’s dynamic relat­ing to this author­ity fig­ure? How can the col­lec­tive emo­tion be so dif­fer­ent from my own? And how can this sort of inter­ac­tion inform our approach to emo­tional designs?