What is a Meaning Map?

One of the great joys of Google is that it can point you to the best resources on almost any subject, without Google itself knowing a thing about that subject itself. This is because it uses the inherent economy of the Internet, especially the web, to calculate the value of the documents which cluster around a given set of key words. The citation and attribution model that Google uses is exceptionally efficient because it takes only a few seconds of my time to install a link to a document that I think has some credibility in a given subject. If I also have credibility in that subject, made plain by the number of highly linked people who link to me, I donate some of that credibility to the new document.

Simple. Now all I'm doing with a link is expressing an opinion, but getting people together to do that is nigh impossible, too much stuff gets in the way. So what would happen if you enabled a virtual opinion sharing to occur, and then mapped that back onto the opinions themselves?

Well, have a look at this.

Deliberation...

To social scientists, deliberation means a group of people sharing reasons for their opinions.
To convince a group of people, you need to give reasons that appeal to them all at once. This usually means talking about something like the public good, or justice; instead of just saying what you want for yourself, you say why anyone in your position should deserve the same. By deliberating, you almost can't help but become a better citizen.
Social problems are insanely complicated. It almost seems like nobody is qualified to form an opinion on them. Nobody all by themselves, that is.
Two heads are better than one, so why not try 1000 heads?

...without discussion

You can't have a discussion with 1000
people. You just can't.
Even with a small discussion group, personalities get in the way of the deliberative ideal: almost always, someone can't admit he's wrong, someone insists on a tangent that nobody else is interested in, or someone refuses to give reasons for opinions.

With Meaning Map

Users can go off on their own tangents,
viewing whatever they want. However, everything they view comes with a shared list of "pros and cons," created by everyone who was ever there before.
This lets each user benefit from all the reasons of the others, without having to reason in lock-step together.
This way it's more likely to be all about the ideas, not the personalities. People don't have to get along to benefit from, and come to understand, each other's reasoning.

I'm about to download it myself and have a play. frankly I don't care whether it works or not, it is exactly the kind of tool I have been itching for for a couple of years. If this ain't it, the idea is out there and maybe the next one will be.