The cre­ation of enclaves of like-​minded peo­ple had a sec­ond effect: It made both lib­eral groups and con­ser­v­a­tive groups sig­nif­i­cantly more homo­ge­neous — and thus squelched diver­sity. Before peo­ple started to talk, many groups dis­played a fair amount of inter­nal dis­agree­ment on the three issues. The dis­agree­ments were greatly reduced as a result of a mere 15-​minute dis­cus­sion. In their anony­mous state­ments, group mem­bers showed far more con­sen­sus after dis­cus­sion than before. The dis­cus­sion greatly widened the rift between lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives on all three issues.

The Inter­net makes it exceed­ingly easy for peo­ple to repli­cate the Col­orado exper­i­ment online, whether or not that is what they are try­ing to do.

Cass R. Sun­stein — The Polar­iza­tion of Extremes

Bal­ti­more is a postin­dus­trial city, wedged between D.C. and Philadel­phia and strug­gling to find its future and rec­on­cile its past. In that sense it’s like St. Louis and Cleve­land and Philly and a lot of other rust-​belt Amer­i­can places, and so sto­ries from here have a chance of being about more than Bal­ti­more per se. The sto­ry­telling here might be quite detailed in ref­er­enc­ing local geog­ra­phy and cul­ture, but it trans­lates eas­ily to else­where and there­fore acquires addi­tional rel­e­vance easily.

David Simon — Creator/​Writer/​Producer of The Wire as inter­viewed by Nick Hornby.