David Price

Mapping the Mind of Government

Sat, 29 May 2010 20:50:01 GMT

Building on the initial analysis of the original Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement in The Independent earlier this month, Debategraph has now mapped the full text of the Coalition's Programme for Government.

(click this link to open the live interactive map)

The map of the Coalition’s programme, outlined in the Queen’s speech earlier this week, gives us an opportunity for an unprecedented democratic experiment during this parliament.

In essence, we have the opportunity to map the mind of Government as it evolves across the coming parliament: to create a new kind of multi-dimensional, non-linear, participatory Hansard for the 21^st century.

The initial map, drawn from the coalition document, allows us break down the Government’s thinking into the individual policy proposals, and then to begin to build around each proposal the debate occurring in parliament and in society about the measures proposed.

The map can grow broadly and deeply without limit around each proposal to express the reasoning underpinning the government’s choices; the counter arguments honed by the opposition; the considerations raised in select committees and commissions; the supportive and opposing arguments raised by different stakeholder groups; and the support and concerns voiced by members of the public—with the objective being to capture all of the arguments and evidence relevant to all of the proposals in as compressed a form as possible, with each argument and point only being represented once.

The Nuclear Politics map, which is currently integrated into the Global Issues section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website and which encompasses over a thousand ideas now; illustrates how large maps of domains of knowledge can evolve collaboratively from small seeds.

New policy proposals can be added to the government map at any time—along with details of the Bills and the proposed spending cuts—and the map can also track what transpires when the proposals are implemented. Is the rationale for a particular measure borne out in practice, and, if not, what changes can/should be made, and what can be learned iteratively from this?

Potential contradictions and inconsistencies between the measures being developed in different areas of government can be highlighted on the map, and the rating system can be used to signal the source and relative levels of support for the different policy proposals and the salient reasons for that support or opposition.

Over the course of the parliament the thinking embodied in the map could also be opened up for mash-up and reuse in different contexts; so that, for example, wherever any discussion of a particular policy proposal was happening on the web the full debate could be accessible in that context to the people reading the partisan fragments.

Of course, this is a colossal undertaking: but an undertaking that is manageable if distributed collaboratively.

British parliamentary democracy was once a beacon to the world: let it be so again.

As with the other maps in the series you can you can keep up to date with the subsequent developments via @TheIndyDebate on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a Google map) using the code shown below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/Flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=62182&sc=small' frameborder='0' width='600' height='600' scrolling='no'></iframe>

Dissecting the Conservative - Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement

Sat, 15 May 2010 16:11:59 GMT

As part of The Independent’s visual mapping of the election and its aftermath, we have broken down the Conservative - Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement into an interactive visual graph that lets you comment on and rate each of the proposals.

(click text link to launch the live map)

By surfacing their shared agenda for the next Parliament explicitly in this way, the Conservatives and Lib Dems have given the electorate an unusually swift and detailed opportunity to give feedback on the proposals they have drawn together in our name.

Both parties have also avowed the desire to open public policy deliberation to wider public input online during the coming parliament; so it’s a timely opportunity as well to consider to what degree—under the intense pressure they faced and in a closed rather than open process—the negotiating teams were able to find an agreement close to a mutual optimum.

To log-in to contribute: click here.

As well as rating and commenting, you can use the interactive graph to add arguments for and against the Coalition proposals and to suggest alternative ideas that might have been missed.

So, in the new spirit of collaboration, what do you make of the agreement?

As with the other maps in the series you can you can keep up to date with the subsequent developments via @TheIndyDebate on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a Google map) using the code shown below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/Flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=60408&sc=small' frameborder='0' width='600' height='600' scrolling='no'></iframe>

Which way are the UK newspapers voting and why?

Thu, 06 May 2010 02:20:11 GMT

A quick overnight analysis of the general election results advocated by 17 leading UK newspapers – and the positive reasons they present for their choices:

(Click link to launch and explore the map)

...based on an initial reading of the editorial declarations made by: the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Evening Standard, Mail on Sunday, News of the World, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, The Observer, The Sun, and The Times.

Visualizing the Third Leaders' Debate

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:59:40 GMT

Building on last week’s map, The Independent is using Debategraph again to visualize the issues addressed during the third leaders’ debate tonight – and to examine the positions of the three prime ministerial candidates on the key questions facing the country in the run up to polling day.

You can follow the third debate live here as the map develops during the broadcast and contribute your own thoughts during and beyond the broadcast here too.

(click text link to open the live debate)

Once you have logged in, you can also rate the merits of the individual points made by Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg—with the thickness of the arrows changing to indicate which ideas and responses are perceived to be stronger (thicker) and weaker (thinner).

As with the other maps in the series you can you can keep up to date with the subsequent developments via @TheIndyDebate on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a Google map) using the code shown below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/Flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=58067&sc=small' frameborder='0' width='490' height='500' scrolling='no'></iframe>

Visualizing the Second Leaders's Debate

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:15:15 GMT

Following the remarkable shift in the polls after last week's debate, what fate awaits Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg as they confront each other in the second prime ministerial TV debate tonight?

The Independent will be using Debategraph this evening to map the flow of questions and answers during the live debate – and in the days after the debate to examine the positions of the three leaders on the key global issues facing the country.

You can follow the debate live here as the map develops during the broadcast and contribute your own thoughts during and beyond the debate too.

(click the text link here to open and contribute to the debate)

Once you have logged in, you can also rate the quality of the individual points made by Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg—with the thickness of the arrows changing to signal which ideas and responses are perceived to be stronger (thicker) and weaker (thinner).

As with the other maps in the series you can you can keep up to date with the subsequent developments via @TheIndyDebate on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a Google map) using the code shown below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/Flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=58067&sc=small' frameborder='0' width='490' height='500' scrolling='no'></iframe>

And for a preview of what to expect, and an alternate visualization tonight, check out Simon Buckingham Shum's excellent mapping from the first debate last week.

Nuclear Politics: a defining moment?

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 14:26:25 GMT

Humanity’s struggle to contain the threat of nuclear weapons and to exploit nuclear energy safely is approaching a defining moment.

Demand for civil nuclear power has intensified in response to climate change concerns, promising new civil nuclear technologies are starting to emerge, and Presidents Obama and Medvedev have just reached a substantive arms control agreement. But the risk of nuclear terrorism is increasing and the international stand-off with Iran, along with scepticism about the long-term interests of the existing nuclear weapon states, threatens to undermine the nuclear non-proliferation framework.

The next two months are likely to shape international nuclear policy for the next decade: with 44 heads of state due to gather at President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in April to develop a plan to secure loose nuclear materials and forestall nuclear terrorism and the 2010 NPT Review Conference—which opens in May at the UN General Assembly Hall in New York—aiming to revivify the nuclear non-proliferation framework.

The policy challenges involved are complex and daunting: and during this period The Independent will be using Debategraph to map the contours of the international policy debate in an interactive, visual form to which all are welcome to contribute.

(click here to open the live map)

As before, the structure of the interactive map is like a wiki – every aspect is provisional, and open to further iterative improvement – and everyone one can add new points to the map.

The aim across the next couple of months will be to articulate all of the salient issues, positions and arguments in a single, coherent and transparent structure – in which each idea and argument is expressed just once – so that anyone can explore the subject quickly and gauge the relative strength of the different arguments and policy options.

You can move around the map by clicking on the spheres: clicking on the smaller spheres takes you deeper into an argument, clicking on the largest sphere takes you back up.

To contribute to the map and to view the underlying details for each point click here (or on the “+ button” below the embedded map).

To rate the different ideas, click on the arrows that connect the spheres – you will be asked to log in first time (to stop people voting for the same idea multiple times). The thickness of the arrows changes to signal which ideas are perceived to be stronger (thicker) and weaker (thinner); with the map becoming a visual, multi-dimensional poll of the community’s perception of the issues.

As with the other maps in the series you can you can follow developments via @TheIndyDebate on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a Google map) using the code shown below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/Flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=53836&sc=small' frameborder='0' width='490' height='500' scrolling='no'></iframe>

Making Sense of Copenhagen?

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:13:57 GMT

During the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, The Independent is using Debategraph as a new kind of global citizen reporting tool to help people around the world make sense collectively of what's happening and not happening at the UN conference.

The process builds on The Independent’s existing cluster of climate change maps, and over the next 9 days mapping teams will be reporting on both the proceedings at COP15 and its civil society counterpart Klimaforum09.

The climate maps already cover over a thousand arguments on everything from Climategate, the perceived threats from climate change, the options for reducing the human impact on the climate, and the obstacles to a negotiated agreement.

Everyone is welcome to contribute their own reports and ideas to the process here.

Copenhagen: What's Happening?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:40:08 GMT

The balance of probability, if the recent downbeat pronouncements from the UN are to be believed, is that the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next month will end, like a Spike Milligan sketch, with the actors shuffling offstage, staring into the half-distance, mumbling "What are we going to do now? What are we going to do now?"

For some the absence of a punchline will signify a potentially catastrophic failure of political leadership and imagination, for others it will reaffirm a predictable pattern of rational choice.

So what’s up? How and why have we arrived at this point? And is this projected outcome inevitable?

Help us explore these questions and the prospects for Copenhagen, using interactive debate map below:

(Click here to open the interactive map)

As before, the structure of the map is like a wiki – every aspect is provisional, and open to further iterative improvement – and everyone can add new points and comments to the map.

The arguments on the map also interlink with those on the The Independent’s wider map on climate change, which has been building online over the last six months.

The aim is to weave together and rate all of the salient issues, positions and arguments in a single rich, transparent structure – in which each idea and argument is expressed just once – so that anyone can explore quickly and gain a good sense of the perceived merits of the relevant ideas.

You can move around the map by clicking on the spheres: clicking on the smallest coloured spheres takes you deeper into an argument, clicking on the largest sphere takes you back up.

To contribute to the map, click here or on the “+ button” below the map. There’s a quick video overview of the process here.

As with the other maps in the series you can you can keep up to date with developments on this map via @TheIndyDebate on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a Google map) using the code shown below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=35600&sc=small' frameborder='0' width='490' height='500' scrolling='no'></iframe>

How to respond to Iran?

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:02:41 GMT

With the news breaking today that Iran has informed the IAEA that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction, and President Obama warning that the plant represents a direct challenge to international non-proliferation and “deepens a growing concern that Iran is refusing to live up to these international responsibilities,” how should the international community respond?

The Independent and Debategraph would like you help us identify, explore and weigh the different options using the interactive debate map below:

(click this link to launch the map)

To explore and contribute to the map, click here or on the link above the image.

As Jimmy flagged on Tuesday, this is the first map in the series to use the new version of Debategraph which launched earlier this week. There are many new features (including simpler editing, real time communication within the community building and exploring the map, and an integrated help system), with the video below offering a quick two minute overview.

As with the other maps in the series you can you can keep up to date with developments on this map via @TheIndyDebate on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a YouTube video) using the code shown below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=29308' frameborder='0' width='450' height='550' scrolling='no'></iframe>

The Future of Newspapers

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:13:06 GMT

The global financial crisis has brought the structural weaknesses of the traditional newspaper business model to the fore as the industry seeks to respond to the rapidly changing competitive environment in the digital era.

A rich debate is developing in print and across the web about the implications of these changes for the newspaper industry, for journalism, and for society. And we would like you to help us explore and weigh this debate using the interactive map here.

With have seeded the map with arguments raised by, among others, Clay Shirky, Richard Posner, Jeff Jarvis, Roy Greenslade, Howard Kurtz, and The Independent's own Gavin O’Reilly; however, as before, every part of the map is provisional and open to further iterative improvement, like a wiki – with everyone being able add new points and comments to the map after registering and logging in.

The aim with interactive collaborative maps of this kind is to weave together all of the salient issues, positions and arguments dispersed through the community into a single rich, transparent structure – in which each idea and argument is expressed just once – so that it’s possible to explore all perspectives quickly and gain a good sense of the scope and perceived merits of the different arguments.

After clicking on the link below to launch the live map, you can move around the map by clicking on the coloured spheres: clicking on the smallest spheres takes you deeper into an argument, clicking on the largest sphere takes you back up.

(Click here to view the live map)

To rate the arguments, click on the arrows that connect the spheres. A 1–9 rating scale opens when you click on an arrow. A “9” rating means that you think it’s a very strong point: a “1” rating that it’s a very weak point. As the community begins to rate the different ideas the thickness of the arrows changes to signal which ideas are perceived to be strongest and weakest.

The “i” button below the map opens a help page and the adjacent “screen” button expands the map to a full-screen view. The other buttons let you view fuller details for each point, add comments and links to relevant articles elsewhere on the web, access links to share and embed the map, and open an overview visualization (which is also where you are able to add your own ideas to the structure of the map).

As with the other maps in the series you can you can keep up to date with developments on this map via @TheIndyDebate on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a YouTube video) using the code shown below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=21130' frameborder='0' width='450' height='600' scrolling='no'></iframe>

Gordon Brown: Termination or Salvation?

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:44:07 GMT

In the aftermath of the historically poor results in the European and local elections, and with the prospects for the general election bleak, Labour MPs face a critical choice this evening; a dilemma on which their careers, the future of the Labour Party, and the future of the country may turn: should Gordon stay or should he go?

Help us reflect on this choice by adding your thoughts and ratings to The Independent’s interactive visual map of the arguments for (green) and against (red) Gordon Brown’s continuing leadership. As before, the whole structure of the map is like a wiki – every aspect is provisional, and open to further iterative improvement – and everyone can add new points and comments to the map.

(click to view map live)

The aim with interactive collaborative maps of this kind is to weave together and rate all of the salient issues, positions and arguments distributed through the community into a single rich, transparent structure – in which each idea and argument is expressed just once – so that anyone can explore quickly and gain a good sense of the perceived merits of the relevant choices.

You can move around the map by clicking on the spheres: clicking on the smallest coloured spheres takes you deeper into an argument, clicking on the largest sphere takes you back up.

To rate the arguments, click on the arrows that connect the spheres. A 1–9 rating scale opens when you click on an arrow (although you will be asked to log in first time – to stop people voting for the same idea multiple times). A “9” rating means that you think it’s a very strong argument: a “1” rating that it’s a very weak argument. As the community begins to rate the different ideas the thickness of the arrows changes to signal which ideas are perceived to be strongest and weakest.

The “i” button below the map opens a help page and the adjacent “screen” button opens the map to a full-screen view. The other buttons let you access fuller underlying content (expressed in a different visualization, which is also where you are able to add your own ideas to the map). Finally, you link to, share and embed any view of the map directly by clicking on the button next to the search magnifying glass.

As with the other maps in the series you can you can keep up to date with developments on this map via @TheIndyDebate
on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a YouTube video) using the code shown below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=18241' frameborder='0' width='450' height='600' scrolling ='no'></iframe>

What should the Labour Party do next?

Thu, 14 May 2009 09:05:37 GMT

With the Labour Party languishing in the latest set of polls – recording in one poll its lowest rating since opinion polls began in the 1940s – a third place finish looming in next month’s local and European elections, and rumours of a challenge to Gordon Brown’s leadership building in Westminster, what should the Labour Party do next?

We would like you to help us crowdsource this topic by adding your thoughts to The Independent’s interactive visual map of the choices the Labour Party faces – and to start the conversation and debate we have included some initial issues on the map. The map also offers you the chance to signal who you think should the lead the Labour Party into the next election and why.

For example, you can develop the arguments for and against Gordon Brown continuing to lead the Party:

(view live)

...or begin to the build the case for and against the potential contenders, such as Alan Johnson (who is the next participant in The Independent's Ask the Question series – following on from Yvette Cooper).

(view live)

This map is different to the earlier maps in the series in that it is exploring the topic from a particular institutional perspective (i.e. the Labour Party's perspective). Future maps will consider what strategies the other parties should be pursuing in preparation for the next election, as well as examining reform of the political system from a non-partisan perspective.

As ever, if you would like to embed the live map on a blog or your own website, you are welcome to do so using the embed code below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=18238' frameborder='0' width='450' height='600' scrolling='no'></iframe>

Dissecting the G-20 Communiqué

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:51:19 GMT

So what are we to make of the G20 Communiqué?

As part of The Independent's visual mapping of the London Summit, we have broken down the G20 communiqué into an interactive visual graph, that lets you comment on and rate each of the major points.

...and we want you to know what you think about the measures proposed.

So click here to start exploring the interactive graph, and tell us if you're feeling quantitatively eased or squeezed.

And why?

(click here to explore the interactive map)

Mapping the legal status of the war on Iraq

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:15:35 GMT

On 26 February 2003 in the build up the Iraq war, a group of 43 Australian legal experts published an article in the Sydney Morning Herald Coalition of the Willing? Make that War Criminals, arguing that the war would be illegal and that George Bush, John Howard, and Tony Blair would be war criminals.

Greg Hunt, the Liberal MP for Flinders responded in The Age on 19 March 2003 with an article entitled Yes, This War is Legal.

Tim van Gelder, one the world's leading argument mappers, and a pioneer of computer-assisted argument visualization, has mapped both arguments with his students at the University of Melbourne – and you can see the maps reproduced below (using Tim's excellent bCisive mapping software).

(Click here to view a full size version of the map above)

As Tim blogged this week the articles are of particular interest from argument mapping perspective as the gravity of the issue and intense public interest at the time gave the authors strong incentives to present the best cases they could.

Yet, as you start to explore the maps it quickly becomes clear that both arguments are at best incomplete.

To some extent the weaknesses of the arguments reflect the limitations of the form in which they are presented; as the full complexities of the relevant arguments don't compress well into short opinion pieces (or, indeed, newspaper blog posts).

...but what is the right form of communication for addressing such critical and complex issues in, and as, a society, when our traditional forms of communication – from editorials, to radio phone-ins, to research papers, to Parliamentary debates, to dossiers (and including, some might say, legal opinions from the Attorney General) – exhibit the same intrinsic weaknesses to a greater or lesser degree?

A growing community of people, of which Tim and I are enthusiastic members, see collaborative visual mapping as one of the most promising developments in this area; as mapping provides a way to assemble all of the disparate perspectives into a coherent whole and to make this structure transparent to all and open to further challenge and refinement by all

There’s much still to be achieved in this emerging field; however, in Tim’s maps and the debate graph below (drawn from Tim's maps and the source articles) it is possible to see the glimmer of a different form of civic discourse across society at critical moments; one in which the first impulse is towards building an open, shared understanding of shape of the problem.

(click here to open the live map)

...and with this in mind, anyone who would like to join us in building a comprehensive, contemporary overview of the arguments around the legal status of the war in Iraq is welcome to begin to fill in the gaps and refine the arguments on the debate graph above or via Tim’s site.

Critical Thinking on Climate Change?

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:25:07 GMT

The Earth's climate is a complex dynamic system about which we have much to learn: so too the climate of human opinion.

Both are layered with uncertainty: yet we are compelled to act; to decide with our knowledge and ignorance deeply entwined.

And, in the case of climate change the costs of poor decisions (in whatever direction) are huge.

A significant tension in public opinion around climate change is expressed in Sir Karl Popper's observation (in a different context) that:

"The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities - perhaps the only one - in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there."

For the supporters of the IPCC consensus, the consensus embodies science at its systematically critical best. For the sceptics, the consensus represents obstinate and erroneous science distorted through the lenses of politics and financial interest. Oddly, both poles are united in the claim that the other is insufficiently, systematically self-critical.

The Independent and Debategraph are experimenting with a way of bringing this process of systematic critical reflection into the wider public conversation about climate change. The approach builds on the three-fold perception that:

(1) Contentious and complex debates can be mapped comprehensively so that all pertinent issues, positions, arguments, evidence, and scenarios are represented in a transparent and coherent visual structure—by breaking down the subject debated into meaningful parts; identifying the relationships between those parts; and presenting the parts and their relationships visually.

(2) The collaboratively editable potential of the web can be used to externalise and open up this process to collective intelligence and critical review of the community.

(3) The evolving maps can be shared and embedded across the web – wherever the debate is occurring – so that changes to a map on any site will be immediately reflected across all the sites on which it appears.

Debategraph is able to address the messy, multidimensional, multi-perspective nature of the underlying issues and to create structures that are sufficiently mutable to evolve continuously and iteratively in all respects as the community's understanding deepens and broadens.

(click here to view live)

However, the real challenge is not the technical one; rather it is to engage the expertise and understanding distributed throughout the community to develop a map to the point at which it truly embodies a mature systematically critical overview of the relevant field.

Hence, the current climate change map should be seen as the seed not the tree—a seed that offers all participants in the public debate (whether supporters of the consensus, sceptics, or representatives of any other part of the spectrum) a means to express their ideas openly, fairly, succinctly in full, in a form in which they can be challenged and refined systematically in the context of all the other ideas.

And, if we were looking for a creed in pursuit of this goal, it might not rest too far from another of Popper's observations:

The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong. Above all, he values the intellectual independence of others too highly to want to convince them in important matters. He would much rather invite contradiction, preferably in the form of rational and disciplined criticism. He seeks not to convince but to arouse — to challenge others to form free opinions.

Visualizing Peace in the Middle East

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:12:56 GMT

With Tony Blair – the Middle East envoy for the Quartet (UN, EU, USA and Russia) – visiting Gaza and the Sderot today, it's a good moment to explore the core issues on which any long-term Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement depends.

(click here to view live)

The image above shows the top-level issues that Independent readers and the Debategraph community have identified so far, namely:

     > the questions around Israeli and Palestinian statehood;

     > how to handle Jerusalem;

     > the fate of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank; and,

    > how to address the Palestinian refugees right of return.

You can open the live map here and drill down into each issue to examine the potential approaches advanced so far in response to each.

Thus, for example, drilling down into the Statehood issue currently opens five potential approaches to Israeli and Palestinian statehood:

(click here to view live)

...and clicking on one of approaches (the bi-national, single state option for illustrative purposes here) reveals the arguments mapped so far for-and-against the single-state proposal:

(click here to view live)

The map is still in an early stage of development, and anyone can add new issues, positions and arguments – with a view to building a comprehensive overview of the options for peace in the Middle East that captures every perspective on the debate fairly and succinctly.

Reaching this goal will take multiple iterations of collaborative dialogue and mapping across the community of interest – and all suggestions for additions to the map across the next few months will be very welcome.

Brainstorming the Middle East

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:51:07 GMT

The events in Israel and Gaza this year have prompted gloomy prognoses for the prospects for peace; a mood deepened by the mixed signals from the Israeli election and the latest developments with Iran.

Lord Patten, writing for European Voice last month, struck a particularly bleak note:

"However tough things looked in the past, I have never felt such a sense of despair about Palestine and Israel. Reason has been drowned in blood. It seems as though the politics of hope have given way to the politics of the cemetery. Poor Palestine. Poor Israel."

Independent readers have started to explore the options for peace in the Middle East over the last few weeks, and, though the map is still at an early stage of development, it already provides a succinct insight into the nature and scale of the challenge; showing how strong views at either end of the spectrum pull the peace proposals towards the gyre of despair.

(click to view live)

One of the advantages of visual mapping in this context, though, at least at the outset, is that it's not asking anyone to take sides: just asking everyone to pool their understanding to map the contours of the problem.

The visual mapping process also opens up the possibility of creative brainstorming and lateral suggestions, such as the proposal to relocate the UN headquarters to Jerusalem, illustrated below – and we would like to see more contributions of this kind as the map develops over the coming weeks.

(click to view live)

Given the progress made with the map so far, and the work still ahead, we're extending the first mapping phase through the spring, and, will be including other partners in the process as we seek to engage the main actors in the region.

Anyone who would like to join us in this process is welcome to do so, and, if you would like to involve your own blog or website readers in the debate, you can embed the map—like a YouTube video—using the embed code shown below:

In the meantime, I will be examining different areas of the map in detail on the blog over the coming weeks and will present the mapping community's work-in-progress to a conflict resolution forum in Haifa later this year.

Obama - Making sense of the world?

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:50:36 GMT

And so the kaleidoscope turns, and we see the world anew.

Or do we?

Barack Obama's inauguration today as the 44th President of the United States of America, marks the end of a remarkable personal and national journey. Arrival at such a destination is a cause for global celebration. But as with all great journeys the arrival is also only a beginning.

Obama is taking a leading role in a world system that is severely perturbed on multiple levels. Such perturbation often proceeds collapse: and can proceed the emergence of a more sophisticated and better-adapted system.

It's not clear—it never is—to what extent the choice of branching paths is open to us. But it surely behoves us to act as if it is.

My (personal) sense is that we face a mess of complex, interrelated and non-linear problems; sane responses to which lie beyond our existing methods and tools. In essence, we need to re-configure our modes of political thinking and organization to enable us—as local, national, and international communities—to move significantly closer to collective maxima of intelligence (both reasoned and emotional).

For those for whom the analogy is familiar, we're awaiting The Mother of All Demos in the political realm to match Doug Engelbart's technological masterpiece 40 years ago (which pre-figured much of the technological landscape that we inhabit and take for granted today). It's the social dimension of Engelbart's vision of augmented collective intelligence that lags behind our technological achievements: and it needs to catch up quickly.

The signs are that Obama, and the team around him, are mindful of this. As others have noted already, one of the most encouraging aspect of the Change.gov experiment was the speed at which the interaction on the site improved iteratively across the transition. The challenge now is how to crystallize this process—to enable genuine and deeply collaborative sensemaking—and how to set this process in motion in the first few months of the administration when the opportunity and receptivity to change are greatest—and when the character of the administration will be forged.

Readers of The Independent and others who have joined in developing the Obama and Gaza maps over the last couple of months have demonstrated on a smaller scale and in vitro that different and radically collaborative models of sensemaking are possible—and we are grateful to everyone who has participated directly so far, blogged about and embedded the maps, and to the BBC World Service's Digital Planet, BBC Technology and PRI's The World: Technology podcast for their support in spreading the maps more widely.

Both maps will continue to develop as exploratory exemplars of the kinds of cumulative, comprehensive and distillative sensemaking processes that the web is starting to enable—with the Obama map, in particular, shifting to a focus on the first 100 days.

Deeper challenges remain. The emerging set of collaborative sensemaking and deliberation tools of which Debategraph, is one example, are still nascent, still figuring out the basic principles—still more VisiCalc than Excel. The tools require a basic visual literacy that itself is only just beginning to emerge in society. And the maps, and other sensemaking constructs, require time to build and time for reflection in an impatient and attention-poor age.

But, today, of all days, is a day for optimism. The day on which Barack Obama embodies the realization that long journeys towards distant mountain tops can reach the summit.

Mapping the Crisis in Gaza

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:17:42 GMT

As the What Should Obama Do Next? map began to address the unfolding events in Gaza last week, it was soon apparent that the immediate crisis and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict merited detailed consideration on a new map.

To this end, Independent readers and the Debategraph community have begun to seed a map on the crisis; including arguments raised by Robert Fisk and Johann Hari, and some of the questions and answers from the Twitter press conference organised last week by the Consulate General of Israel in New York.

The Gaza map—which will require significant iteration and community input from a wide range of voices to reach maturity—is motivated by two medium-term objectives:

(1) to present the different worldviews that underpin the conflict fairly and succinctly on a common map.

(2) to map creatively and constructively the options open to the participants in the conflict and the international community, and the arguments for and against the different options.

This is an emotive subject, and the map is at an early stage of development; so If you see statements with which you disagree strongly or spot gaps in the arguments, please help us to address these on the map.

After logging-in, anyone can add new issues, positions and arguments, edit and restructure the map, and evaluate the different arguments; so the whole structure evolves as new perspectives are added to the map.

Hence, every aspect of the map at this stage should be regarded as mutable and provisional—with the aim being to enrich the structure iteratively and collaboratively until the map reflects a maximum of community intelligence.

As with the Obama map, you can also keep up to date with developments on the Gaza map via @TheIndyDebate on Twitter.

Towards Live Government...

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:57:59 GMT

The Independent's mapping project, What Should Obama do Next? , is one of multiple initiatives appearing across the web linked to the Presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.

As Jimmy observed in his blog on the Huffington Post, mastery of internet campaigning is not the same as delivering government via the web. So it has been fascinating the observe the first edemocratic steps on Obama's Change.gov site.

The Change.gov process so far has included blogging, YouTube insights and feedback (example below), threaded commenting, and the admirable step of opening up the content on the site via a Creative Commons license—and the volume and variety of the feedback on the discussions around health care (3,701 comments) and the economy (1,996 and counting) illustrate the potential and the challenges involved in processes of this kind.

Dan McSwain is right to note that "no other transition team has ever opened these types of channels of communication with the American people" and the team's early energy, enthusiasm and willingness to experiment are praiseworthy; though, no doubt, like all start-up developers in public beta they'll be attuned to thoughtful and constructive criticism as part of their process of continuous development.

Sustaining this openness to iterative experimentation will be one of the keys to fulfilling the transition team's early promise beyond the inauguration. In part, this is because the capabilities of the web are evolving rapidly. YouTube and Twitter, for example, two of the most significant on-line tools used during the campaign, didn't exist at the time of the last Presidential inauguration (and Twitter was only formally incorporated after Obama declared that he was running for office).

But, more fundamentally, it is because this openness to iterative and collaborative experimentation and improvement is one of the web's deep lessons and, potentially, contains the means to transform our understanding and experience of governance.

Doc Searls refers to this wider emerging process as the "Live Web", and so, in his honour, we might characterise the opportunity ahead for the Obama transition team as being the chance to the effect significant shift towards "Live Government".

More smart people outside government than within it

For the first time in modern industrial society, governments have the chance to realise the potential embodied in Bill Joy's observation that there will always be more smart people outside government than within it...

And, in view of the scale and complexity of the challenges faced in the early 21st century, there has never been a more urgent time to realise this latent, distributed potential.

Live Government will take many forms that we can't see clearly yet; however, two dimensions that seem central to the concept based on current trends are:

(1) Making the data of governance fluid, transparent, mashable and easily discoverable in context; getting the data in front of the people who have a contribution to make, and ensuring that the data is continuously up to date. This trend can be seen in the US in the form the Sunlight Foundation and the recent Apps for Democracy competition—both of which owe something to the pioneering work of the MySociety team in the UK.

(2) Externalising the current policy thinking of government in a open structured form to which people can contribute continuously, directly, precisely, cumulatively, and with a high signal-to-noise ratio. This trend, still comparatively nascent, can be seen in a prototypical form in policy wikis, annotation tools and sensemaking tools (of which Debategraph is an example).

It's against this background that the latest development from the Obama transition team—in making all policy documents from official meetings with outside organizations publicly available for review and discussion on Change.gov—offers a tantalisingly encouraging sign.

As Dan McSwain, again, notes:

"...we're inviting the American public to take a seat at the table and engage in a dialogue about these important issues and ideas -- at the same time members of our team review these documents themselves."

It will be fascinating to see if the Obama transition team can carry this energised enthusiasm into office.

MAP UPDATE:

A big thank you to everyone who has contributed to the development of the map over the last week, and to the people below for helping the map meme to circulate in the blogosphere:

Visual Mapping, Benchmarking e-gov, Tomorrow Happens, Heuristiquement, and @stoweboyd, @grisvert, @TheMindMapWatch, @jeanlucr,

..and incidentally, henceforward, as well as the map email digests and RSS feed you'll also be able to keep track of the latest developments on the map here http://twitter.com/TheIndyDebate.

Mapping the mind of the blogosphere

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:17:19 GMT

To celebrate the launch of The Independent Minds blogs, we want to map the mind of the blogosphere.

Not all of it, obviously… not, for example, the part that’s thinking about Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie.

We want to focus on the part that’s thinking about the inauguration of the new President and the choices he faces. And we want to transfer the collective insight of the blogsophere into the map that’s already building here.

Can we do it? With your help… yes we can.

We’re not expecting you to learn the pros and cons of argument visualization; though if you want to stretch your mind with something other than a Crossword or Linkudo we’d love to help.

Instead, all you have to do, if you are blogger, is to let us know when you have posted about Obama and any of the policy issues he faces. You can do this in two ways:

(1) Include a link to the map in your blog post:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/article1022466.ece

or,

(2) Embed the map like a YouTube video, using the code below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/flash/fv.aspx?r=7714&d=2&i=1' frameborder='0' width='490' height='650' scrolling='no'></iframe>

Then tag the post TheIndyDebate. When you do this, we’ll detect the post and start to include your thoughts in the map.

Embedding the map will let your readers watch the map evolve in situ on your blog. And if you link to or embed the map, we’ll publish a reciprocal link here back to your blog.

Starting today, with: Ideal Government, Contrary Brin, AlwaystheTwain.

If we miss a blog post, email me at david AT debategraph DOT org – and if you're not a blogger, but know someone who might interested in participating, please pass the links along.

What should Obama do next?

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:37:13 GMT

As part of the launch of Independent Minds, and in the build up to Barack Obama’s inauguration on 20th January 2009, Debategraph has teamed up with The Independent to give Independent readers (and any one who would like to join us) a chance to map and reflect on what Obama should do next. Click here to see the map.

Over the next 10 weeks, we'll be building a series of interactive debate maps exploring the key public policy and political questions facing Obama as he prepares for office.

The maps will draw on, and begin to synthesize, the analysis of Obama's options by The Independent's reporting team, as well as Obama's published policy agenda and public statements.

Help us map the whole picture by weaving your ideas and comments into the maps too; which you can do directly by logging-in to the maps, or indirectly by leaving a comment here on the blog.

It's a chance to participate in a deep form of public dialogue about the challenges ahead for an unprecedented President at a vulnerable and complex moment in human history.

I'll be posting regular updates about the maps on the blog, explaining the visual mapping method, and revealing further public initiatives as the inauguration approaches.

For now though, here's the current version of the map.