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Flash Crowd
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<h2 id="characters">Characters</h2> <ul><li>Barry Jerome "Jerryberry" Jansen – "newstaper" (television correspondent and cameraman) for Central Broadcasting Association (CBA). Father Eric brought the family to ruin when attempting to participate in the massive investment rush for the then-burgeoning stock in displacement booths.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a></li> <li>George Lincoln Bailey – CBA editor</li> <li>Wash Evans – host for CBA's <i>Tonight Show</i> flagship news program</li> <li>Janice Wolfe – friend of Jerryberry</li> <li>Nils Kjerulf – manager of Los Angeles International, now far from the major depot of mass transit of yesteryear due to the decrease in need for air transport</li> <li>Gregory Scheffer – customs guard.</li> <li>Dr. Robin "Robbie" Whyte – inventor of the displacement booth</li> <li>Harry McCord – former <a href="/facts/Los_Angeles_Police_Department/P4CvFHdY">Los Angeles Police Department</a> Chief.</li> <li>Tahitian ticket-taker – formerly owned a house until squatters drove him and his family out and moved in</li></ul> <h2 id="other-flash-crowd-stories-by-larry-niven">Other Flash Crowd stories by Larry Niven</h2> <ul><li><i>The Alibi Machine</i> (1973) <ul><li>Transfer booths turned out to be a convenient alibi tool: you slip from a party for a minute, kill someone across the globe, and be back unnoticed.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a></li></ul></li> <li><i>All the Bridges Rusting</i> (1973)<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5"><sup>5</sup></a></li> <li><i>A Kind of Murder</i> (1974)<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6"><sup>6</sup></a></li> <li><i>The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club</i> (1974) <ul><li>The titular Club is a gang of pickpockets who took an advantage of flash crowds. Their doom came when police figured out how to deal with flash crowd crime. Previously when police was spotted the crowd used to quickly disperse via JumpShift booths. Eventually police figured out how to reroute destinations of all booths in an area into detention nets.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7"><sup>7</sup></a></li></ul></li></ul> <h2 id="use-in-other-works">Use in other works</h2> <p>In various other books, for example <i><a href="/facts/Ringworld/Hpeugaxm">Ringworld</a></i>, Niven suggests that easy transportation might be disruptive to traditional behavior and open the way for new forms of parties, spontaneous congregations, or shopping trips around the world. The central character in <i>Ringworld</i>, celebrating his birthday, teleports across time-zones to "lengthen" his birthday multiple times (particularly notable since the first edition had the error of the character heading the wrong direction, increasing that edition's value). </p><p>Niven's essay "Exercise in Speculation: The Theory and Practice of Teleportation" was published in the collection <i><a href="/facts/All_the_Myriad_Ways/aEG9C0Py">All the Myriad Ways</a></i><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8"><sup>8</sup></a> In it he discusses the ideas that underlie his teleportation stories. </p> <h2 id="other-reading">Other reading</h2> <ul><li>"Flash Crowd" is included in the short story collection <i>The Flight of the Horse</i>. The story (or parts of it) was originally published as "Flash Crowd" in <i>Three Trips in Time and Space</i>, by Robert Silverberg, ed.</li> <li>"The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club" is included in the short story collection <i><a href="/facts/A_Hole_in_Space/us1ysjUM">A Hole in Space</a></i></li> <li>Other stories in this series are in these two books and in <i><a href="/facts/All_the_Myriad_Ways/aEG9C0Py">All the Myriad Ways</a></i>.</li></ul> <h2 id="similar-references">Similar references</h2> <p>On the <a href="/facts/World_Wide_Web/wvnTrWFq">World Wide Web</a>, a similar phenomenon can occur, when a web site catches the attention of a large number of people, and gets an unexpected and overloading surge of traffic. This usage was first coined by John Pettitt of Beyond.com in 1996. Multiple other terms for the phenomenon exist, often coming from the name of a particular prominent, high-traffic site whose normal base of viewers can constitute a flash crowd when directed to a less famous website. Notorious examples include the "<a href="/facts/Slashdot_effect/0dgrQbWC">Slashdot effect</a>",<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9"><sup>9</sup></a> the "Instalanche" (when a smaller site gets links by the popular blog <a href="/facts/Instapundit/5rht9l5P">Instapundit</a>), or a website being "<a href="/facts/Fark/Xg0lGqGm">Farked</a>" or <a href="/facts/Drudge_Report/IaDXLotf">Drudged</a> (where the target site is crashed due to the large number of hits in a short time). </p> <h2 id="see-also">See also</h2> <ul><li><a href="/facts/Flash_mob/EhHjHXj5">Flash mob</a></li></ul> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>Prucher, Jeff (May 7, 2007). "flash crowd". Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. Oxford University Press. pp. 65–66. ISBN 9780199885527. Retrieved July 19, 2016. <a href="9780199885527" target="_blank">9780199885527</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>Grossman, Lev (June 13, 2012). "Lord of the Ringworld: In Praise of Larry Niven". Time. Retrieved July 19, 2016. <a href="https://entertainment.time.com/2012/06/13/lord-of-the-ringworld-in-praise-of-larry-niven/" target="_blank">https://entertainment.time.com/2012/06/13/lord-of-the-ringworld-in-praise-of-larry-niven/</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>Wasik, Bill (June 11, 2009). And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture. Penguin Publishing Group. pp. 21–. ISBN 9781101057704. Retrieved July 19, 2016. <a href="9781101057704" target="_blank">9781101057704</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:4"><p>The Alibi Machine <a href="https://www.larryniven.net/?q=bibliographic-reference/the-alibi-machine" target="_blank">https://www.larryniven.net/?q=bibliographic-reference/the-alibi-machine</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:5"><p>All the Bridges Rusting <a href="https://www.larryniven.net/?q=bibliographic-reference/all-the-bridges-rusting" target="_blank">https://www.larryniven.net/?q=bibliographic-reference/all-the-bridges-rusting</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:6"><p>Kind of Murder, A <a href="https://www.larryniven.net/?q=bibliographic-reference/kind-of-murder-a" target="_blank">https://www.larryniven.net/?q=bibliographic-reference/kind-of-murder-a</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:7"><p>Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club, The <a href="https://www.larryniven.net/?q=bibliographic-reference/last-days-of-the-permanent-floating-riot-club-the" target="_blank">https://www.larryniven.net/?q=bibliographic-reference/last-days-of-the-permanent-floating-riot-club-the</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:8"><p>Niven, Larry, All the Myriad Ways, New York: Ballantine Books, 1971. <a href="/wiki/All_the_Myriad_Ways" target="_blank">/wiki/All_the_Myriad_Ways</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:9"><p>Buyya, Rajkumar; Pathan, Mukaddim; Vakali, Athena (July 26, 2008). Content Delivery Networks. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 274–. ISBN 9783540778875. Retrieved July 19, 2016. <a href="9783540778875" target="_blank">9783540778875</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>