On the second month of this year I had the strong awareness that Internet, also having powerful channels like the web, the email, the mailing list, the forum, able to allow a very easy communication, was still devoid of an important functionality. The persons in fact still today can, yes, to exchange ideas and information as much as they want, but then they are abandoned to themselves, not having a special, right instrument, when they would lead all this baggage of knowledge towards a decisional goal.

The email and the web, and their directed derived: the mailing list and the forum, allow to confront ourselves us much as we want, but not being conceived in order to have other specific purpose but the simple exposure of the information, do not allow that important, decisive ulterior step, quite conclusive, that is the vote of an individual about an issue, a motion, a proposal, both inner to a group that social.

For some year we also have systems in order to carry out surveys. However they are very elementary instruments finalized to weigh the total public opinion on a presented issue: in these systems the individual does not appear at all and he reduces himself to be a simple numerical unit that joins to the others in order to constitute finally a weight, rough, dead democratic ponderousness.

We had no complex instrument able to make an individual to express positively or negatively on a data argument. We could not confront our vote with those of other individuals. We could not change it in part or completely in basis to the received feedbacks. We did not have a tool able to favour and show with immediacy all this decisional process through a graphical exposure, precisely an interactive table that maintained coupled to every individual her/his own respective opinion.

After having begun a campaign in Italian language in favor of the realization of this new instrument and new Internet channel (it is conceived in a way that through opportune standards every single table could connect itself to all the others, being able to obtain the total feeling of an entire society on several issues) without having obtained nothing but answers of interest, I have translated the manifest for a confrontation and deliberation desktop in English language and I have contacted some persons that I thought could have been interested or involved. And in fact I have met the positive answer of a well known Internet pioneer and futurist, Howard Rheingold, and obtained to be put in contact with person able to develop the first application of this new, possible, deliberative universe.

In this way I have virtually met David Johnson, in Austin, Texas, ("I have been working for some time on graphical groupware of various types. When Howard pointed me to your idea for a table based layout, I couldn't resist beginning to develop a prototype") who through the software development technology named Runtime Revolution has begun to develop a "client side application".

Today the work of David is already well formed, visible and testable like a pre-beta:

http://www.altuit.com/webs/clients/GroupGrok/Downloads.htm

for PC e MAC. If you want, you can download the software, open a session for her/his group, or insert the following data:

name: visitor
password: visitor

to enter the session named Progressive Proposals. If you are interested to express your vote on those specifical proposals, please, ask for a personal account.

It is a first version, with still limited functionalities, but it is already an optimal beginning. Therefore, I invite the minds able to accept innovations to try it and to send feedbacks that can help to well address the birth of this baby. In particular, we will appreciate considerations on the communication with other possible future applications of this same type. Because if already now the thing is interesting, it will become fascinating when more softwares of this kind (and more persons and groups) can make interact their respective opinions.

I come back therefore to invite the open source international community, the great brands of Internet, and the social computing entrepreneurs, to develope this proposition, confrontation and deliberation system mainly with web based solutions, by using for example MySQL; please, see this example without functionalities:

http://www.hyperlinker.com/change/cdd_0.htm

More minds will confront themselves in this first delicate moment and better will result the final product and more fastly it will be put to disposition of the society. And the firsts to arrive will set the standards.

I know well how much work will be necessary in order to realize all this, but please think that if our societies, if we ourselves want to evolve, uncoupling us from the primitive democracy and relative idea of politics that today still plague us, if we want to make a real improvement towards a democracy, a society, a life, progressed, evolute, altogether better, we do not have great choices: we must realize new instruments to make born it, new channels on which make it flow.

Our best regards,

Danilo D'Antonio

Eudaemony Laboratory
Via Fonte Regina, 23
64100 Teramo - Italy


For a confrontation and deliberation desktop
http://confrontation-deliberation-desktop.hyperlinker.org

For a Telematic Assembly of the Movement
http://www.hyperlinker.com/change/atsf.htm


DCDFS V1.0 - 04/12/36