Tools for Dialogue and Deliberation on Wicked Problems

Thought Experiment

3rd Excerpt from Jeff's Conference Call Compendium Map

Rating:

View Full Size

Tags:

Comment by Jack Park on May 7, 2008 at 22:54: This seems like we are asking about one component of a larger entity. The opening question says "what would we need to do to make it a serviceable platform..." With a failing memory and absent going back to the larger map, I've lost context for the anaphoric "it". I'm wondering if we were talking about Ning. Maybe it doesn't matter. The larger question seems to be "What will the collective sensemaking platform of the future look like?"

My sense is that it will not be one platform; rather it will be a variety of platforms, some of which will still rely on linear talking-heads forums, email lists, and ordinary wikis, all coupled with people who are not literate in the use of such tools.

But the question asked specifically about 200 willing climate experts. That feels like a different crowd, one that, at the very least, is trainable. In that case, my intuitions could be set aside in favor of a single portal, or perhaps a composition of portals, each wired together with a coordination (read: federation) platform--if you guessed a topic map, you're reading my mind.

Comment by Aleksandar Malecic on December 13, 2010 at 23:03: Douglas Engelbart was doing some experiments in this vein back in the day but they didn't come up the way he expected. As much as functionality and design are important, people should also put their egos aside. There is a great book "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb describing experts and their "ability" to predict future events (think of climate change and financial crisis). This kind of online collaboration should, in my opinion, start as something playful and "stupid", as learning from the beginning. It should start with many degrees of freedom. I am trying to do something similar here: http://2020.global.gaiaspace.org (my profile is http://2020.global.gaiaspace.org/global/pg/profile/malecic). Experts or not, people should share their activities and thoughts and wait for others to continue when they can't.