The Internet: Issues at the Frontiers

Tools

Canvassing the various tools out there for Internet-assisted debate and discourse. Could be anything from a Facebook group, or Mind Manager mapper... still in the formative/brainstorming stage, please add. Mchua

Specific tools

• http://www.debategraph.com - lets people map out arguments
• http://am-crt.amthinking.net/crt/berkman/login.php
• lingobot by gregdek - realtime irc translation via google translate
• gobby - great for transcriptions (used in Wikimania '06)
• http://thinkature.com/

General classes of tools

• chat/IM (many-to-many, many-to-one, one-to-one, private backchannels, discussion bots - we use a triagebot to keep some software dev discussions on track at OLPC - how privacy/logging of conversations affects what people say)
• wikis (how various features affect the type of discourse/usage)
• mailing lists (interesting: how their usage changes when they're bidirectionally synced with forums - this happened at OLPC)
• forums (see above on mailing lists)
• videoconferencing
• virtual layers atop physical spaces (for instance: one of the most fun presentations I've ever done was when I made my slides live-editable by the audience during the talk - trying to find the tool I used to do that... Mchua)
• translating services (see gregdek's lingobot, above)
• relay services for the disabled (example: deaf person types or signs via webcam to interpreter who speaks into a telephone, listens for response, then signs/types back)
• audio layers on top of online games - talking with your World of Warcraft team during a strike, etc.