Turning Debate into Data

One of the difficulties of any debate is how to extract the pertinent points. Interactive Democracy provides a system that can turn debate into data for analysis in many different ways. It does this by allowing people to vote point by point, question by question and on what type of evidence is being presented, from Heresay to Good Quality Empirical. Furthermore, the identity of voters, though hidden from public view, can include their age, location and qualifications.
These classifications allow users, including journalists and politicians, to analyse the debate in all sorts of different ways. It will enable better questions and summaries from journalists, new points from commentators, more focused campaigns from politicians and better law formulation from the legislature.

Graphing the Evolution of Debates

This TED talk by Hans Rosling, though fascinating in its own right, shows how computer generated graphs can help make sense of complex information. The same type of technology could be used to show how an Interactive Democracy debate evolves. For example, if each debating point grows or diminishes in approval, or is superseded by a counter point, this could be shown in a similar way as Hans Rosling's examples. If the data is open source, other people may create enhanced displays which may include demographic information about voters without divulging their identity (e.g. qualifications, age, sex and geographical location).

Technology Savy Demographics

Interactive Democracy has an inbuilt bias for those with Internet connections and IT skills. Information Technology facilitates cost effective voting but it is essential that everyone has reasonable access to both the equipment and training needed to make ID work. I suspect that that point has almost come, given the access to public libraries that we can all enjoy, each with an Internet facility. Undoubtedly this technology favours those who are familiar with it. However, I make no apology for the natural bias ID offers to those demographics that own a computer and know how to use it. There has always been this type of bias in democracy, a bias for those that could read in the early 20th century, those that owned a wireless in the 1930s or a TV set in the 1960s. Always a bias for those with the mobility and the time to get to a polling station.