An interesting follow-up

I'm currently researching the effects of new media (the internet? blogs? i'm not sure how specific to get yet) on politics (partisanship? bias? again...the specifics have as yet alluded me).

While reading this article, based on a speech from a democracy conference in 2000, I came across this paragraph:

Now, the new technology allows us to talk to people all across the world. But as far as I can make out, our problem is, we don’t know how to talk to our neighbors. We look to Bosnia, we look to Africa, yet we can’t talk to each other. People can’t talk to their wives and husbands and children. Yet we are celebrating that we can now talk to strangers across the world. The democracies we have in small nations are not working very well yet wse hope to have a global democracy because of the new technology?

Generally, I've learned how to talk to my roommates, am working on my friends and family, and am in the middle of changing how I talk to potential dates.

And here I am, naively blogging, I think opening my audience to the whole world. Who am I kidding?