This commentary in the Christian Science Monitor shares a perspective on an effort to build trust in a new online, state run public forum called Engaged California. Wondering if this community of learners will integrate AI analytics in an effort to discover wisdom and build trust.
Building a community of learners that inspires trust in an online forum
by kris | Mar 21, 2025 | 7 Core DLE Elements, BEST LINKS EVER, Learning Community, Tech Tips | 1 comment
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Thanks for this post Kris; Christian Science Monitor used to be sort of the gold standard for unbiased reporting, and perhaps still is.
Several aspects of this post are useful. First perhaps is the reminder that one should look for solutions even to seemingly intractable problems. If somehow Ireland was able to have an effective civic dialogue through some sort of assembly for as difficult and as polarized a topic as abortion, then there could be other similar efforts that bear fruit.
de Tocqueville’s seminal work on the US democracy gives useful perspectives even for us today. The forms of social interaction and participation have dramatically changed, but the challenges to form practical consensus and compromise still exist as fundamental requirements for democracy to work.
In New Mexico, an organization called New Mexico First was created by visionaries in the state a few decades ago with the goal of finding practical consensus and compromise for difficult issues in the state. Such as one of the most challenging…water use laws. It has had a lot of successes over the years that lead to actual legislation being passed, and laws created to solve important problems in a way that most citizens could find acceptable.
PSA might do well to interview some of the NMF leadership on what has worked for them, and what hasn’t. Clearly today the challenges for achieving consensus on important issues seem nearly beyond reasonable hopes, but that means we need even more development of methods and more innovation in our approach to bring differing opinions into some functional relationship.
We also need to note that anonymous social media has lead to trolling and flooding the zone with BS that drowns out useful information or comments. Restoring identity to online actions. seems like a prerequisite for accountable opinions. Can we do that at this point? There’s a large amount of what amounts to anarchy underlying much social media…and anarchy is not about compromise and consensus. We got ourselves into this; but there do appear to be ways out.