I’m with you here. What kind of dialogue and public discourse can we have when we talk to those like ourselves. I asked one of my students this once who was really into online communities. Her take was that it was important to have “bridges” between groups so that ideas could travel from group to group. She felt that it didn’t take too many people to bring a new idea into an existing group, if the person was truly part of the group. I’d love to see everyone’s social networks mapped. It is so fascinating to see how tight or loose or diverse ones connections are.
Felicia, I understand that student’s perspective. Think back to the Ronald Reagan days and the public/political views on homosexuality of the times. As much as Reagan was conservative and would typically hold strong views against homosexuals, his experiences in the film industry gave him connections to people he worked with who were gay. It helped him to see beyond the rhetoric and adopt a more open view than many of his political allies. It is this breaching of the borders between groups, whether they be economic, political, or national, or other boundaries, that opens one’s eyes to a “contrary” viewpoint. It takes work for people to suspend their automatic reaction and think about the other person’s viewpoint, so I suspect it will take a conscious effort for this to become more widespread in the virtual world.
