Discovery - Debategraph

Overheard this on the BBC yesterday on the way home from work.
The original article was presented in a BBC podcast entitled .. Digital Planet and aired January 13, 2008.

Podcast is below
Duration - 26 mins 30 sec


The wiki debate visualization tool

What is that?

My take?
Upon arrival at the Debategraph site, I was immediately confronted by a series of bubbles of various sizes in a java enabled window that took up about two thirds of my screen. All of these bubbles appeared interconnected much like they might be if trapped in a spider's web. A central bubble notes an issue or a question. Outlying bubbles represent either sub topics or responses to this central issues. As I moved my cursor to interact with this web, to "roll over" a bubble, details on the reasoning behind such a sub issue or question emerged. As I explored this more and more, I began to discover how a series of ideas and supporting ideas interconnected to support a position.

What we have in effect, is a graphical presentation or map if you like of a debate or argument.. and its components. What makes this even more interesting is how I as a viewer can participate in this "debate map's" development. As more and more people participate in the process, the debate map "mature into the definitive articulations of each debate". Debategraph notes that every change you make—whether correcting a text, adding a new argument, or starting a new debate—contributes towards the fulfilment of this social promise.

Unfortunately Blogger does not support embedded flash widgets so I can't put it in here for you to view..

What others are saying

The tool itself is pretty darn cool... Take a look. It's damn interesting.
David Weinberger (Co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, author of Everything is Miscellaneous, and Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society).

.. a really interesting and logical way of laying out the issues... The wiki element seems to be particularly helpful enabling collaborative analysis. Rhona Parry, Ofcom, A New Way of Thinking.

It’s a really nicely designed tool... and was tested by Downing Street on their website last year following a speech by Tony Blair. The maps can be embedded into blogs posts, which is a useful feature. John Breslin, Co-founder Boards.ie, and member of the W3C Advisory Committee

Source

Baldwin, Peter and Price, David ‘Home’, debategraph - the global debate map, wiki, [online] Available from: http://debategraph.org/ (Accessed 14 January 2009).

BBC World Service (2009) ‘Debategraph / Ushahidi / Web Access for ALl / Consumer Electronics Show ’, Digital Planet , BBC World Service , [online] Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/digital_planet.shtml (Accessed 14 January 2009)