Consensus Builder: A Place to Speak, Listen, and Be Counted

This paper presents a vision for an internet application that will support constructive political discourse. Consensus Builder will invite people to speak their beliefs and engage in interpretive processes that result in internal representation of statements as ontological models. Analyses of similarities and differences between statements will support listening and exchange of ideas. Semantically informed query and summarization capabilities will facilitate learning from Consensus Builder and the emergence of community leaders capable of negotiating solutions to difficult problems. Illustrations of interfaces for each aspect of Consensus Builder help the reader to understand what using Consensus Builder will be like, and to appreciate its potential contribution to society.