Time Magazine

In the current issue of Time Magazine, the cover story is all about "What's Next".

Click "Permanent Link" below for an excerpt from a discussion Time had with "the smartest people we know" where you'll read a summation of how technology, and Meetup.com in particular, brings people together -- versus further segmenting them -- and how it is empowering an increasingly disenfranchised group of people: stay-at-home moms.

TIME ASKS: "SO IS THE INTERNET TRULY CREATING CONNECTIONS AMONG PEOPLE? OR DIVIDING US AS WE HIDE INSIDE OUR PRIVATE SHELLS?"

MOBY, pioneering electronic musician: I have a friend whose Swedish mother--she's in her mid-60s--goes online to meet men. I was with my friend as he drove her to the Hilton to meet a Canadian doctor she'd encountered online, and I thought, How disconcerting. Because it was 10 at night and most likely she was going to meet this guy and stay in his hotel room. Go back 50 years, and she would have been in her Swedish village, depressed, a bit lonely and sad. Instead she's in midtown Manhattan, preparing to spend the night with a doctor, and her son is driving her to the hotel!

TIM O'REILLY, publisher and technology advocate: : There's also more communication even in apparent isolation. Think about the private bubble people live in. Kids spend a lot of time alone in front of their phone, their TV, their computer. But they are also communicating in new ways, and I suspect most of us in this room maintain communication with a group that is far larger, far more geographically diverse than we ever would have known without technology.

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.

Link to the entire article, "The Road Ahead"