Here’s an interesting article about InFlow, software that analyzes spontaneous networks (such as the people you correspond with via email) and produces a map of the social relationships between the members of those networks. One of the most interesting bits from the article is what happened when InFlow’s author, Valdis Krebs, used the program to map political groups based on book purchases at Amazon.com:
“What I got were two cliques that were about as distinct as they could be. I kept looking for paths that crossed between them. Every time I tried to follow one of these paths, I’d go out three or four steps, and then boom, I’m right back in the clique.” Most strikingly, the two networks intersected only on a single title: Bernard Lewis’s What Went Wrong. Otherwise, the two groups were engrossed in entirely different reading lists, with no common ground.
While not rigorously scientific, this little experiment in political social mapping points out one of the biggest problems in American democracy today: lack of discourse. The left and the right aren’t listening to each other. Liberals get more liberal, and conservatives get more conservative, each side isolating itself from the influence of the other.
The real power and promise of democracy occurs only when parties that disagree engage in dialog with each other. It’s okay if two sides disagree, as long as they’re willing to actually listen to the other side’s point of view. Often, when two parties take the time to really listen to each other’s beliefs, they realize that they actually agree on many important issues. These agreements, and the compromises that result from them, are the foundation for positive change in society.
