> The people whom I know in meatspace, I did not really choose. I know them
> because we both happen to be in the same place, met the same people, etc,
> and it's all rather a haphazard way to meet people.
Take that viewpoint to its extreme and you'd never deal more than very
superficially with anyone whose opinions didn't largely reinforce your own.
Most of us choose as friends people that aren't likely radically to
challenge any major aspects of our world view, obviously. Also, the people
we meet 'haphazardly' are often limited to those of similar socio-economic
background since they're working in the same field, attending the same
college, and so on.
Personally, I value having to interact in real life with people I can't
easily understand and in a lot of cases don't much like. I might modify my
own opinions through random exposure to those of other people I'd certainly
never actively have chosen to interact with, or at the very least learn to
be more tolerant of a diversity of ideas.
Online interaction can be equally eye-opening, and the irrelevance of
physical distance might sometimes make it more so; but I think online
communities can also exaggerate people's existing tendency to huddle
into insular cliques that are self-validating but ultimately pretty
stagnant.
To be fair, I seem to remember couple of years back the Opera developers were quite resistant to building an integrated mail client into the browser, but ended up doing it anyway in response to extensive pressure from userland. Not a fantastic excuse, but they did try.
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> The people whom I know in meatspace, I did not really choose. I know them
> because we both happen to be in the same place, met the same people, etc,
> and it's all rather a haphazard way to meet people.
Take that viewpoint to its extreme and you'd never deal more than very
superficially with anyone whose opinions didn't largely reinforce your own.
Most of us choose as friends people that aren't likely radically to
challenge any major aspects of our world view, obviously. Also, the people
we meet 'haphazardly' are often limited to those of similar socio-economic
background since they're working in the same field, attending the same
college, and so on.
Personally, I value having to interact in real life with people I can't
easily understand and in a lot of cases don't much like. I might modify my
own opinions through random exposure to those of other people I'd certainly
never actively have chosen to interact with, or at the very least learn to
be more tolerant of a diversity of ideas.
Online interaction can be equally eye-opening, and the irrelevance of
physical distance might sometimes make it more so; but I think online
communities can also exaggerate people's existing tendency to huddle
into insular cliques that are self-validating but ultimately pretty
stagnant.
To be fair, I seem to remember couple of years back the Opera developers were quite resistant to building an integrated mail client into the browser, but ended up doing it anyway in response to extensive pressure from userland. Not a fantastic excuse, but they did try.