Forum: The Road Ahead

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ESTHER DYSON, editor of technology newsletter Release 1.0 for CNET Networks: The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect. In my own experience, it has drawn my family closer, as we post pictures on Flickr. It has done more than tap into something latent; it has actually created something that wasn't there with the younger family members. We couldn't do that before because we were all geographically separated.

DAVID BROOKS, author and New York Times columnist: Is it possible that as the Internet creates more geographic diversity, it creates less demographic diversity? There once were millions of people in Elks Clubs, and Elks Clubs were incredibly diverse. These days, with, say, online dating, you can screen people who aren't demographically like yourself.

CLAY SHIRKY, writer and technology consultant: But look at Meetup.com The most active users are stay-at-home moms. In the suburbanized, two-career U.S., social capital has moved away from the neighborhood and toward work. The stay-at-home moms are actually now remarkably disadvantaged in terms of social capital. We're used to thinking everything is going to get more and more virtual until we're these big floaty video heads, but actually there is a return of the real, as we figure out how to use this stuff to have real-world encounters.

ISN'T THERE A RISK THAT DESPITE ITS PROMISE OF DEMOCRATIZING SOCIETY, TECHNOLOGY WILL LOCK US INTO HOMOGENEOUS CLUSTERS?

BROOKS: As the information age matures, you're getting social stratification based on education. If you come from a family earning over $96,000 a year, your odds of getting a bachelor's degree by age 24 are 1 in 2. If you come from a family earning under $36,000, it's 1 in 17. People at the top of the income scale pass down the skills one needs to thrive in this economy to their kids who get into Harvard--where the median student comes from a family making $150,000 a year--and they go on to an affluent suburb. And they pass it down, so you get really good public high schools, and people there are more likely to marry people like themselves.

O'REILLY: Is this really new?

BROOKS: It's increasing more quickly than before. Look at the relationship between a father's income and a son's. Until the '70s, there was a loose relationship. Since then, it has become much tighter.

DERY: But there's also an upside to sociological clustering, at least online. In the 1950s, if you had the hapless happenstance of being born gay in Oklahoma, you might have spent many a lonely night biting your pillow and cursing the heavens for making you the only gay on earth. Now any 18-year-old with a modem is just a click away from a universe of fellow travelers, and to me, that's a good thing.

MALCOLM GLADWELL, author and New Yorker writer: Yes, there is homogenization in clustering, but there are many different clusters being created all at once, and the overall effect can be to increase diversity. It may be that in each of those groups, I'm finding people who are precisely like me, but there are 10 me's. There's Malcolm the football fan, Malcolm the psychology nerd ...

WHO ARE WE, REALLY?