Surely it would be a good thing if people were encouraged to climb outside their milieu. It would be nice, for example, if AmeriCorps became a rite of passage for young Americans, so that at least for a year of their lives they would be with people unlike themselves.
Rebecca quotes David Brooks.
Go here and here and here for more.
There’s more to this, of course, than the timeliness of this notion of a broader and more inclusive national service.
The unforeseen side-effects of being able to select your own information or build your own newspaper means you may never get the Recommended Daily Allowance of stuff you should be aware of. Like it or not, you need to be aware that the president is agitating for a war with a tyrant halfway around the globe while a sniper moves freely around the nation’s capitol killing almost a dozen civilians in public places.
On the one hand, the mainstream press may miss a story completely where overseas outlets or small independents (On the internet, no one knows you’re not the NYTimes) may cover it. Browsing and undirected serendipitous reading is still important.