Bubble Trouble

The first conversation I ever had about the Internet was in 1993 with Robert Wright, who was then a colleague at the  New Republic. This "Net" thing was going to be a big deal, I remember Bob telling me, but it could create a few problems. One was that it was going to empower crazies, since geographically diffuse nut jobs of all sorts would be able to find each other online. Another was that it could hurt democratic culture by encouraging narrow-minded folk to burrow deeper into their...