RU Sirius responds to Rushkoff

One of the most obvious examples of a dark side of the mob was covered in this morning's Sunday New York Times... these vigilante "flesh engines," particularly popular in China... where they use a combination of online "intelligence" and IRL "intelligence" to hunt down a perceived evildoer. The culture around this has been around for a lont time but it was enlarged by the attack on a woman abusing a cat... which provoked justifiable outrage, but now, as the reporter writes, the vigilantism has spread: "Searches have been directed against all kinds of people, including cheating spouses, corrupt government officials, amateur pornography makers, Chinese citizens who are perceived as unpatriotic, journalists who urge a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people who try to game the Chinese system. Human-flesh searches highlight what people are willing to fight for: the political issues, polarizing events and contested moral standards that are the fault lines of contemporary China." (We actually had an article on this about a year ago on the h+ website).

I wonder if others on this panel have ideas about how to separate "the crowd" from "the mob"... Is it possible and desirable?