Reading Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs in the airplane this morning between Seattle and Atlanta, it occurs to me that reading books—at least nonfiction books—has become a poorer experience since the advent of the Internet. Part of the power of Rheingold’s writing is its allusive nature: he collects dozens of points of reference and authorities across as many fields of study and assembles them into a pattern. But you’re always aware that there are depths beneath each name that illustrate different aspects of the story, such as wearable computing/cyborg Steve Mann’s collision with the new blunt instrument of airport security, who forcibly unwired him.

Reading such a work on an airplane, without an always-on Internet connection, is a poorer experience because it deprives the reader of the opportunity to check context, collect evidence that informs or opposes Rheingold’s point, and follow lines of inquiry that may digress from the path of the narrative. It also deprives one of access to Rheingold’s Smart Mobs blog, in which he continues collecting, pointing to, and commenting on evidence of the emerging collective, mobile intelligence evolving around us.

(This was excerpted from a longer entry on my blog.)