Terms like ‘misinformation’, ‘fake news’, and ‘echo chambers’ permeate current discussions on the state of the Internet. I believe a lack of technological support to evaluate, contest, and reason about information online—as opposed to merely disseminating it—lies at the root of these problems.
Exploring whether we can do better, I created Socratrees, a website for collaborative argumentative discussion targeting layman users. In this project, I prototype user interactions with argument technology with the aim of balancing ease of use with the complex nature of structured argumentation.
Research
The design rationale and results of a first evaluation can be found in a paper, Socratrees: Exploring the Design of Argument Technology for Layman Users (arxiv preprint). Having failed to publish or attract funds for this project in academia, this will now remain a hobby project I collaborate on with others at the Canonical Debate Lab.
Related blog posts
Socratrees: private beta launched!
Over a year ago I announced Socratrees, a platform to support online argumentative discussion. Complex interrelations between different statements which make up an argument are often hard to follow, or hard to contribute to, when forced into a linear format. This is an unfortunate characteristic of essentially all modern media used to present arguments and…
Make Discussions Great Again
There is one upside to the recent election of president Donald Trump (yes, the title of this post is a pun) and the earlier withdrawal from the European Union by the UK: it has become a whole lot easier for me to pitch an idea which I’ve been advocating (with some opposition) for nearly a decade…
whatheco.de 