This morning, I was one of the two opening speakers at the Supernova 2007 conference in San Francisco. I shared the stage with Clay Shirky. We both talked about social media and social networks. I think we got blogged in lots of places, but here’s the first one I saw, on ZDNET, by Mitch Radcliffe.

My thesis was that Internet tools and culture (targeted search, blogs, social networks like MySpace etc.) make it easy for us to hook up only to the information and people we already identify with, and consequently they propagate a Us v. Them mentality.

I called it “anti-social media.”

This has proven to be quite unhelpful for solving big problems, both on the net and in society at large. And these problems could be dealbreakers for the future of innovation on the Internet.

They include what I called the ‘Hackathon’ which the Internet has become — a playground for spammers, identity thieves, search scammers, ‘gold farmers,’ etc. — as well as copyright, privacy, ‘Net Neutrality‘ and spectrum issues.

I suggested that the innovators in the audience invent some tools that bang people into information they aren‘t looking for, and foster relationships with people who aren‘t already like them.

Wouldn’t that be interesting?