Read Street: New author in town: Bill Wasik, father of flash mobs - A blog for a community of readers, in Baltimore and beyond.

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Bill Wasik, who's probably best known as the creator of flash mobs and more recently wrote And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture, has succeed where many "tech" writers fail. He has taken a highly dorky subject: the lifespan of "memes" -- or stories that spread like wildfire on the Internet, and just as quickly die down -- and written a book that you don't need a technical manual to understand.

But first a little background: According to the book, Wasik got bored in the summer of 2003. But instead of getting a drink with friends, or even going on a road trip as most people would do, he created a phenomenon: the flash mob.

One of my favorite examples of a flash mob is this event at Grand Central Station, coordinated by Improv Everywhere, in which more than 200 people simply freeze en masse in the terminal, like living statues. After a few minutes, they then "unfreeze" and continue on their way.

While Wasik's book touches on flash mobs and their popularity, the book goes into more detail about our 15-seconds-of-fame culture, and how silly, frivolous "nanostories" capture everyone's attention for a month or two, before being completely forgotten.

"There was the flash mob project, which I had done semi-anonymously and never intended to write about," Wasik explained during a phone interview Monday. "But when Ford sort of co-opted the flash mob idea for a series of concerts in 2006, I just thought it was too funny not to go and write about it in a sort of tongue in check way, to tell this story."

"I had book editors asking me if I wanted to expand this into a book, and I wouldn't, if it was just flash mobs," he continued, "but instead as an exampe of, and a metaphor for, everything that's going on online. ... We seem to encourage a culture of quick-hit successes, and so I thought that if I could write that kind of book [which explores that phenomenon], I would do that."

But as a writer and editor at Harper's Magazine, an "old-fashioned" print magazine as he puts it, Wasik decided he wanted to write this book so that the average person would enjoy it.

"I hope that the book can speak to anyone who engages with the Internet in some way," he said. "It's definitely not written for the superuser, for someone who is completely obsessed with this stuff and knows all about it already. I'm not a 'technologist,' I think most books about the Internet, up until now have been written by technologists."

"For me, the Internet is just the air that we breathe these days. So much exciting culture is happening online that you just can't avoid it," he said. "This is my attempt to grapple with what the Internet has done to culture from more of a literary and humanistic point of view."

Wasik, whose wife will now be studying public health at Johns Hopkins University, will continue his work at Harper's, commuting to NYC periodically from Baltimore, but he says we shouldn't expect a rash of flash mobs in Charm City. At least, not of his doing. While he still considers himself in the "culture industry," he now sees himself as more of an observer than a creator of Internet celebrity and culture.

Which isn't to say he wouldn't enjoy a flash of celebrity for his book, online or offline.

"I'll take readers from wherever they come," Wasik said with a laugh. "Again, I sort of think that you can't overthink it, you just have to express what you want to, and hope that there's an audience for it."

And if And Then There's This isn't enough Wasik for you, read more on the Harper's Web site, his blog and his Twitter feed, Twithangers, where he writes 140-character messages that end mid-sentence.