One of the challenges facing those of us who are trying to use the Internet to encourage the large scale involvement of citizens in public policy making is what is an appropriate tool to use.
There have been various attempts at somehow making easy the involvement of citizens in public policy discussions, while organizing the richness of conversation and ideas from many people. It’s not easy.
One possibility is the Deliberatorium, which has been worked on by the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. Their goal is to overcome the weaknesses of previous efforts, including “Disorganized content, Low signal-to-noise ratio, Quantity rather than Depth and Polarization.”
You can see a video they produced at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Ipljh_Zsg
and more information at
http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/deliberatorium-hack
© 2011 Norman Jacknis
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