Kind Friends of the DRUPAL Community,
I send you my best regards.
I'm an Italian social researcher. I had an idea for the advancement of the digital society. Please, could you grant me a minute in order to present you this proposal in order to see if could be of interest for you?
Imagine a special software that let the single members of a mailing list, or of an association, or of a social group, to take position respect to a motion, a petition, or any other proposal of social order.
Imagine a special web page containing a table: on a side there is the list of the proposals, of the decisions to be taken, of the calls, perorations, etc. but also special sections containing generic themes to be enlightened. On the perpendicular side there are the members of the group who are available to publicly express their preferences, by voting the arguments in discussion.
Therefore, something like this:
| Vincent | Anna | Sandra | Dan | etc. etc. etc.
fuels
rationing | no | yes | yes | yes |
public
employment
rotation | yes | no | yes | yes |
optimal
demographic
density | yes | no | yes | yes |
------------- ---------- ----------- -------- --------
responsible
turism | ko | ok | ok | ko |
Naturally for every issue, call, theme, etc. there is a link that sends back to the document produced by the person or the group (but also by a delegated commission) in order to expose the matter. And also every member has a link to a document that let us know who is the person that has expressed that preference, and the same for every single decision or opinion, in a way that we can know the reasons, the objections, the doubts or points remained unresolved.
Through a page of this kind we obtain a general view immediately visible with only one simple glance. The decisional geography of a group appears immediately in all its extension. And we find a richness of shadings that only the contribution of every single person, of every individual sensibility and knowledge, can add to the proposed issue.
The very important thing, however, is the fact that this table must not be conceived like something inanimated, static, dead. On the contrary: we must see it like something dynamic, in continuous evolution, well alive, quite a pleasant meeting place to be attended even daily, like a club, but also and mainly a kind of desktop, of table for common work, a situation for confrontation in which, in basis to the decisions and contributions of everyone, everyone could also change his/her own decisions.
Periodically those conclusions that would reach the general agreement would be published with prominence informing other groups, the media, etc. Those issues that would meet yet disagreement should instead wait that further reflections and contributions lead to the result of a commonly felt thought.
Really, to a tool like this is easy to add (at least through the imagination :) a long serie of complements. For example the possibility to order in different ways the whole table (to be realized probably with the technique of the database shared on line), and naturally various statistics.
Imagination however leads us to think that, in the case this dynamic and permanent desktop for confrontation and deliberation would effectively result useful and it's use would spread around, we could progressively conceive analogous cybernetic meeting places where collect at an higher level total data of several groups. In this hypothesis some form of standardization would be very useful, in a way to permit in short time, through appropriate digital spiders, the extrapolation of a complete national feeling in relation to any issue.
The final result of all these possibilities could be a real tool of evolute democracy, participated electronically. Something well far from what is waiting for us next (to affix an "x" on an electoral card).
And in effect this network of confrontation and deliberation desktops, of these "look and decide yourself!" pages could become another important, precise channel, a people's decisional, deliberational channel, a fondamental tool that we all need still today after the email, web, ftp, newsgroups and mailing lists.
Every day, how many discourses are pronounced by people?
Our whole Planet can be viewed like a chatting unity flying in the Cosmos.
But how many concrete decisions are really expressed, even if urgent?
And we cannot express these decisions until we will not have the right tools.
Well: could the DRUPAL Community be interested in carrying out this crumb of future? I remain at your complete disposal in order to add ideas and deepenings.
Many thanks for your attention,
Danilo D'Antonio
HyperLinker.com
Via Fonte Regina, 23
64100 Teramo - Italy
For a confrontation and deliberation desktop
http://confrontation-deliberation-desktop.hyperlinker.org
DCD V1.1 - 06/03/36
