Goal
Our goal is to make the world a better place and a core aspect of this is how people relate to each other, truly putting people at the centre of the internet.
Imagine…
Imagine being able to have a discussion with someone on a very different part of the political spectrum from you without acrimony or arguments, just a reasoned debate where you can really learn to understand the person’s hopes and fears and see your common ground.
Imagine being able to have a discussion with an expert in their field and you have access to ask questions as much as you like without the person running out of time or patience.
Imagine being able to have a discussion with someone in a different part of the world or a very different social class but being able to do this from the safety and comfort of your own office or home.
Imagine your great, great grand-children having a discussion with you long after you are gone.
Furthermore, imagine answering questions and having a forum where you can really explain yourself to the world at your own pace.
This what ‘online-conversations.net’ enables. (name up for discussion)
The way it works
You answer questions and the replies you make are video or audio recorded and the resulting recording is put on youtube with a coded name so it can easily and quickly be searched by the system.
You ask questions of a person who has answered questions and they are instantly played back for you.
If the question you ask has not been asked of the person, a notification will be given so that the person can answer the question in the future both for you and for everyone else who will ask the question in the future.
Known Issues
Very few people know how to record video of themselves well so the system and the interface design would need to deal with how to edit out the moment the user clicks on the record/end record button and so on.
Benefits
This can be a way for people to really express themselves in a controlled way, where they are guaranteed to get their position across without being interrupted or having an argument.
It’s one thing to listen or watch a full documentary of someone but something else to be able to ask specific questions and to get immediate answers.
Popular people can have ‘conversations’ with millions without spending more time than if they are talking with only one person.
This can provide very clean citations where the person has stated exactly what they mean.
Future Enhancements
This is a prime opportunity for AI to learn more about each person and to offer possible answers to questions which have not been asked before. The AI which can be developed for this can then be fed questions and answers from people who have not used the system, based on recordings of them or documents written by them.
When the system has enough people answering enough questions, we can do large scale analysis and let the end user do the same, such as allowing for the question: who else says something like this? or is this a common answer? etc….
Users should be able to edit answers into a new type of conversation-document where they can link discussions together and the audience can choose to partake passively or actively.
This could also be a powerful way to check shifting perspectives.
Should we think of building this?
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