We know about flash mobs. But online junctions are also poles that attract communal grieving, like the spot on a dead man's curve where a popular high schooler crashed. Adherents of the savage ballet are surely aware that NFL star Sean Taylor died this morning from a gunshot wound he had suffered Sunday night. News of the shooting broke Monday morning, and of his death, earlier today. Which made this otherwise innocuous YouTube of Taylor highlights posted over the summer an instant online shrine. Over 1,100 comments have been posted as of this writing (surely more by the time you click it) -- almost all of them during the past two days.

Read more

Many of us will probably remember, however vaguely, Robert Putnam and his famous "bowling alone" thesis about the decline of social capital in the US. Some of us remember thinking that it was more about transformation and reallocation of social capital, but to make that case right now would be kind of pointless and a distraction from the work Putnam is doing now (even if it's right, which it may not be). Putnam has just published the results of five years of research on the effects of diversity on social capital within communities (which here means neighborhoods or something similar). The conclusion: diversity reduces social capital within the community. Most striking, and most distressing, it turns out too that members of a diverse community not only trust persons of other ethnic groups less, they also mistrust others of the same ethnic background.

Read more (5 comments)