Thanks to David Osimo’s highly recommended blog on eGovernment 2.0, I was in Brussels at the end of last month to present our work-in-progress on Debategraph to the European Commission’s ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling Consultation Workshop Framework Programme VII. It was a fascinating day, exploring the Information Society Directorate’s long-term research agenda in [...]
Archive of posts tagged Debate
Don’t think about thinking. It’s not on the test…
A double thank you to Dan Pink (and Mike Sporer) today, for introducing me to Tom Chapin’s guitar-based critique of trends in modern education policy: Obviously Tom’s closing observations about the importance of teaching of students how to think and engage in rational discourse strike a chord here. And our belief in the potential multiplier [...]
Thinking about changing the world?
A week in which: Dan Pink, Al Gore’s former chief speechwriter, told Tim Ferriss… “Ultimately speeches are about actions. The only reason to give a speech is to change the world. That’s a high bar. But that’s what we should aspire to when audiences give us this privilege.” …TED uploaded a video of Dan’s old [...]
Changing Climate: live blogging the Progressive Governance summit
Congratulations (and a relaxing Sunday) to Simon Dickson and the Downing Street digital team, for their phenomenal work on Policy Network’s Progressive Governance summit this morning. At short notice, they produced an impressive and engaging microsite built around a live video stream, live blogging and comments, and immediate access to the summit papers. It was [...]
mySociety's Free our Bills! campaign
The ever inspiring mySociety launched its first campaign on Tuesday, with a characteristically simple, pragmatic and catalytic focus: to open up the legislative process to wider and more effective scrutiny by publishing Bills in a semantically marked-up form that can be automatically interpreted and used across the web in imaginative ways. It’s a small, manageable [...]
Ethics Bites: Sport and Genetic Enhancement
David Edmonds, award winning BBC World Service Radio producer, co-author of Wittgenstein’s Poker and Bobby Fischer Goes to War, and one of the smartest, most modest, and most decent people you could have the privilege to meet—full disclosure: we’re friends—has a new venture under way. In cahoots with fellow philosopher and broadcaster Nigel Warburton, David [...]
Debate Maps, Public Policy, Openness and Trust
Paul Johnston wrote a characteristically thoughtful and constructive post last month on the need for public authorities to open up debates on public issues to genuine citizen engagement and influence. Prior to the post, Paul and William Heath catalysed a debate map on the government’s plans for a new Identity System in the UK; a [...]
Joining the Open Education Revolution
Following our adoption of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, I am delighted to report that Debategraph has signed the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. The Declaration, discussed here by Jimmy Wales and Richard Baraniuk, launched in January this year with the support of the Open Society Institute and the Shuttleworth Foundation. The full text [...]
From Debatemapper to the Debategraph…
An exciting time for us, with long-planned changes now live on the site—and the culmination of our first developmental phase, which began last summer with the pilot projects for the UK Prime Minister’s Office and the Royal Society for Arts. The changes highlight both our social purpose—of building a global repository of public debate that’s [...]
Can computers think? Mapping the great debates
We stand on the shoulders of giants… “…so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.” Robert Horn is one of my [...]