Mobile Networking - A Question

I just finished reading an article about the mobile social networking software (MoSoSo) on USA Today and found this:

“The Iowa State University media professor, who has written extensively about the cultural impact of new technologies, suggests that an increased focus on networking only with like-minded folks could diminish the ability to deal with the unfamiliar - a skill that is vital to democratic institutions.”

[via USA Today]

Can someone please explain this to me? I don’t see how networking "diminishes the ability to deal with the unfamiliar." No matter where we are, we get closer and stick to people who share the same fields of interest and are like minded… How networking through the mobile is any different than networking in real life?

Comments

[Ricky Cadden]

Xen,

I think what he was referring to is if you build your network only with people who do and think like you. What you end up with isn't "free flowing ideas" or innovations, but "groupthink," which is where people who previously had different ideas spend so much time together discussing the same things that they begin to think alike.

However, I think he might not be thinking of mobile social networking in the same aspect as you and I might. Personally I think of it as a way to specifically do that: meet others who have the same or similar interests to me.

To the professor, networking might be thought of as a way to increase your "circle" beyond your personal circle.

[Xen]

Hey Rickey,
What the professor didn't take in count is that we look for people who think alike no matter where we are... and I totally agree with you :)

[Idan Aderka]

I totally agree with Xen. Human beings have a strong proclivity to interact with similar others. Studies in psychology have repeatedly shown that people constantly seek to be surrounded by others who have similar interests or ways of thought (not to mention similar intellegence, age and so on). We all want to feel that others understand us, that we belong. So it should come as no surprise that human nature manifests itself in new technologies of comunication as it does in the old.
If you want people to constantly spend time with others who hold different opinions, and have different interests, it's human nature that has to be changed, not technology.