About a half-mile from the White House, a presentation on online extremism is taking place at George Washington University (GW). The precise setting, however, is unusual: The event is in the physics building, rather than one of the political science halls across the street, and the discussion is being led by a fast-talking and personable British physicist.
Neil Johnson starts things off in unorthodox fashion, placing some props in the middle of a conference table: a snack-size Ziploc bag filled with multicolored paperclips and a cylindrical container holding 100 Chinese “fortune sticks.”
After a brief introduction, Johnson pulls open the bag and begins spreading the paperclips — different colors to represent different people, he says — randomly across the tabletop. He then assembles the clips into small linked clusters, which grow or shrink, sometimes splitting off and merging with other clusters. His hands move quickly, rearranging the clips as deftly ...
