Is Diversity Anxiety a Symptom of Technocracy?

I don't understand the recent trend of opinion pieces asserting that people are becoming more and more culturally inbred, associating only with those who already share their opinions and tastes. There's a sociological term for this, called something like self-selecting assortion or self-assorting selection. For instance, curiously soon after The New Atlantis wrote a longer piece on the same subject, Andrew Sullivan wrote an onanistic reflection on his isolating(not to mention very expensive) iPod onanism. He reflected on how he constantly shuffles his favorite music for himself while ignoring all the other dupes on the subway, who are also wearing iPods and shuffling their own soundtracks. He or The New Atlantis also throws costly TiVos into the mix.

Perhaps this is a sort of "diversity anxiety" that afflicts those with Progressive, or simply Upwardly Mobile aspirations. There's a New York Times trendspotting article, a genre about as worthwhile as trainspotting, that indicates this might be part of the nomadic lives of certain professionals--in other words, a class phenomenon--manifested in the very neighborhood they choose to live in. Here's one man reflecting on his community:

"The good thing about it is that it is a very comfortable neighborhood to live in," Mr. Link said. "These are very homogenous types of groups. You play tennis with them, you have them over to dinner. You go to the same parties."

"But we're never challenged to learn much about other economic groups," he said. "When you talk about tennis, guess what? Everybody you play against looks and acts and generally feels like you. It doesn't give you much of a perspective. At work, diversity is one of the biggest things we work on."

(The Five-Bedroom, Six-Figure Rootless Life, NYT June 1, 2005)

Technocrats whose work and education require from them an incredibly mobile and lucrative lifestyle have the luxury of choosing their neighbors, but even having embraced the fully autonomous regime of choice, they flinch at some results of their own choices. But being indefatigable technocrats, they think more information, training, and hard work by other technocrats employed in the diversity industry can reduce the lamentable consequences that wouldn't even be a problem if they had simply left things up to chance in the first place. It's little wonder Irony is so damn popular.