As the monoculture fragments, social-media platforms and other wired and unwired communities are creating new kinds of connections — connections that are building bridges between people in ways that watching Seinfeld never could. But Nass says they’re not likely to be the kinds of connections that will hold a nation together. “The problem is, the things that tend to glue society together are people who share a number of things together,” Nass says. “It makes it easier to mobilize, to bring people together behind a cause, behind an issue” — health care, say, or war.
