Another term from science fiction has apparently made it to Real Life. The phenomenon of “Flash Mobs” :
has made the news. As a long-time Larry Niven reader, I recognize the term as coming from his story “Flash Crowd”, which describes an effect of cheap teleportation – people crowd to areas of high interest, creating sudden crowds that disperse rapidly.
Apparently the concept circulasted via the internet, where it was used to describe on-line crowing of heavily hyped events:
and from there entered “Real Life” when people decided to really “mob” events (although communicating and coordinating intent via the Internet).
The first time I’ve seen an SF term enter common jargon in a long time. Maybe we’re due for some more.
