From Re-Public, a special issue on the social web, including an essay on the spatial production of friendship, and "YourSpace is mytime, or, what is the lurking dog going to do – leave a comment?" From TED, Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action. How do we form preferences when we do not fully understand complex issues? We fall back on heuristics, and the most powerful of these is to find leaders with whom we feel cultural kinship — and then follow whatever they recommend. Forty years ago, Marylin Bender's The Beautiful People exposed the lives of the emerging Jet Set in all their profligate, trivial — yet gripping — glory. The Nation magazine’s Alaska cruise is The Love Boat for Policy Wonks. From The Weekly Standard, a review of

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