The DSBPI commends the Dean campaign on its ability to create community among strangers. In an atomized society, enhancing community is a challenge and a worthy cause. The latest online buzz, of course, is social networking; from Freindster to Spoke Networks to MeetUp.com, using machines to meet humans is an important digital development.

When the DSBPI thinks about social networks, what comes to mind is the most anonymous and omnipresent social interaction: the stock market. Billions of shares trading hands, from one person to another, anonymously through machines. The DSBPI would like to create a technology that enables human connection between buyers and sellers of shares, so that person A who just sold 100 shares of IBM to person B could connect with that buyer, sending him a message that he'd like to chat - figure out why person B is buying when he is selling, compare notes, whatever.

Of course there are endless details - privacy, security, regulatory - to work on. But we think it could be interesting to think it through.