Sorry for not responding until now...family demands :) I appreciate the writeup, I find it really interesting, but I can't decide whether I agree. I'll take a

Sorry for not responding until now...family demands :) I appreciate the writeup, I find it really interesting, but I can't decide whether I agree. I'll take a stab at explaining my thought process, but I haven't thought this through very much, so bear with me. On the one hand, I definitely see the phenomenon you're talking about. The access to info we have, and the speed we have to access it, means that more and more of our lives seems to be driven by feedback loops. We also make it worse by naturally gravitating towards loops (like communities) that reinforce our preconceived notions. That's always been a concern but we have so many more options now, and we can find a slice of the world where there's basically no disagreement at all, and then ruthlessly expel anyone who questions our dogma. I see this a lot in certain subreddits: insta-ban if you reasonably question the gospel they espouse. I don't know, maybe there is room in the world for conversation spaces that aren't constantly subjected to the disagreement of outsiders, but it's also a little alarming to see it spreading so fast. On the flip side though, here are two things that give me pause about your theory. First, no matter how unfashionable they might be, the laws of physics still operate. Everyone might be flocking to some new-fangled framework, but if it's clearly inferior to another, then there's an opportunity there to go against the grain and win. It doesn't always happen, but it's not that rare. Ditto for your political example: Reddit was (and honestly still very much is) an embarrassing echo chamber of leftist ideas, with very little tolerance beyond a few subreddits (which usually have their own intolerance, just on the other side). But Trump still won! The echo chamber has influence, but the laws of physics ultimately don't care that much. Second, technology does allow for more individualism. Maybe most people are becoming more "standardized" within the big groups, but others are able to be more honestly who they are, aren't they? So maybe the world is splitting into two parts. The much bigger part is becoming more homogenous and clustered, and then a few people are becoming more individualistic and creative and able to chart their own path. I don't know though, as I'm writing this, I'm wondering if those people aren't actually more individualist, they're just in a smaller group that behaves the same as the larger one. But is that driven by technology? Or have we always been like this, and technology is just making us better at being terrible? Anyway, if you're ever in NYC, I'd enjoy chatting about this over coffee or beer :)