While on vacation, Larry is hosting a great list of guestbloggers-- this week it's Cass Sunstein, a superstar professor from U Chicago Law. He's done quite a bit of really important First Amendment work. His most recent book Republic.com argued (as I interpret it) that the increase in speech channels afforded by the Internet, cable TV, etc. is a bad thing because people will start to listen to and communicate with only similar- minded people. And that when people only talk to people who agree with them, they tend to become more extreme.
On first reading I found this argument quite seductive. By example, when we first got Tivo, I started recording all the Charlie Rose's. Then, I'd skip to one that really interested me when I had time to watch. Before, Tivo, I would just watch the Charlie Rose that was on, and perhaps learn something about a subject I knew nothing about. I think the latter is the preferred option if you want a population knowledgeable about a wide variety of topics, not just the things they already know they care about. This example isn't perfect as time-shifting adds some extra elements, but I've since decided that the right solution isn't to get rid of Tivo, or decrease the available options for information consumption one has at any given time because of the related impact on information production. I think the effect of increased channels on people's ability to speak outweighs any countervailing impact on extremism.
By example, this is a topic I am really interested in. As are a lot of other people who usually do not have regular opportunities to converse with Cass Sunstein. By using the blog-- Professor Sunstein is able to discuss his new ideas on the upsides of increased channels for his next book with a larger audience than his colleagues in Chicago, or who he calls or emails directly. He can ignore them if he prefers, but I think there are some really great comments posted on the blog. I believe the value of the time people spend commenting on Sunstein's post outweighs any down-side from there not spending time on more mainstream content (that which would be available if the amount of channels available was precisely one-less than sufficient to support lessig.org this week).
As for the extremism element, it's probably true. But the notion of moderating the public by containing their access to information is really icky. We can censor stuff that's likely to incite violence, but that's as far as I'm willing to go. If we still agree that over time, more speech is good because the best ideas rise to the top, then I'd prefer opportunities for all ideas (even those that reflect the worst inside us) to get refined and perfected because at the end, the best ones will win.
(As for his specific question about how we might see social software as "pricing ideas," I think there are seeds of a good answer in this post but I'm going to think about it some more.)