In Chapter 4 of the book America 2076 I reviewed a number of existing and emerging technology innovations that were making feasible a new kind of political collaboration.

But I noted that to enable a true mass collaboration some required technologies still needed to be developed:

“Some additional capabilities may be required which are
missing from the arsenal of Internet and software
applications available today. These missing capabilities
relate to cost-effective, reliable and accurate methods of
consolidating text and thought, with the ability to remove,
abstract or layer redundant memes (ideas, concepts) so
that they can be comprehended and decided upon quickly.
We can do things that come close to this, but the
constraint is currently a significant one. Advances in
communication networks and software might be able to
remove this constraint within a few years…”

Progress toward development of these missing capabilities is moving on several fronts, which seem to often fall under the heading of “sensemaking“.

Mark Stefik of PARC perhaps was the first to use the term in his 2004 post The New Sensemakers: The next thing beyond search is sensemaking.

Ramana Rao’s exposition on REAP is also worth reading.

This pair of matrices by Robert Steele shows data aggregation and sensemaking as a quadrant among other types of data management, offering useful comparisons.

Sensemaking appears to differ from data mining in that data mining methods expect to extract from large masses of data critical insights that will prove to be pivotal.

To my thinking, the de-duplication of political memes is the fundamental critical capability needed to make mass collaboration really feasible. Sensemaking, if it becomes a formal information technology discipline, would have to address this on some level.

I am collaborating with several groups on developing one or more technology solutions that address the requirement for de-duplication of memes and sensemaking in general. If you know of other efforts, please leave a comment.