New York Times Magazine

:nytimes:

Cover Story: Sunday : The New York Times Magazine.

By SAMANTHA M. SHAPIRO

The (mostly) young people behind Howard Dean's campaign — the brokenhearted, the techno-utopians, the formerly apolitical — come together because they like the candidate. But they also come together because they like one another. . .

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The latest holy grail of the tech industry is the idea that people can fuse the virtual communities and digital connections of the Internet with real, human life. Investors are pouring money into Web sites and software programs that claim to perform this function, like Friendster, which lets users visually represent their real friend networks online, and Meetup.com, the site that has helped build the Dean campaign. Meetup.com takes its inspiration from books like ''Bowling Alone,'' by Robert D. Putnam, about the decline of American public life; its founders claim that the regular monthly meetings arranged through its site (gathering any group from Wiccans to dachshund lovers to, more recently, supporters of political candidates) can help heal the disintegration of the American community.

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Teachout, sitting at the very edge of her seat, tells me that ''the revolution,'' as she calls it, has three phases; the first is Howard Dean himself, the second is Meetup.com and the third is the software that Rosen, Johnson and Brooks work with: Get Local, DeanLink, DeanSpace. ''DeanSpace,'' Teachout says, ''is the revolution.''

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The effect that Teachout says she hopes the software will create sounds like the experience of being in a tight-knit community: seeing people you know, responding to them, being acknowledged. Teachout speaks about these ideas as if she is reinventing the concept. She says that Meetup.com, is emerging as the ''ritual'' element of the new Dean community. ''It's like church, the central place where people go to get inspired.''

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A Dean campaign stop at the
University of Northern Iowa. Not
pictured: the software that makes
it all possible. (AP)

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Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/