CI/Argumentation in UN State of the Future Report
The State of the Future 2008 report is out now from the World Federation of UN Associations Millennium Project, with an updated analysis of the 15 global challenges that its worldwide panel have been analysing for 12 years now. The Independent summarised it quite helpfully recently.
Of particular interest from the ESSENCE perspective is Chapter 6: Global Energy Collective Intelligence. Jerry Glenn, the Millennium Project Director, lays out the case for a distributed, collective intelligence network dubbed GENIS (Global Energy Network & Information System), which includes the kind of structured, graphical deliberation and argumentation tools being deployed in ESSENCE.
The first figure reproduced here shows the core visual language called IBIS (Issue-Based Information System) around which many of the sensemaking tools on offer for ESSENCE are based (CoPe_it!, Cohere, Compendium, Debategraph, Deliberatorium).
The Chapter 6 appendix (on the CD accompanying the report) provides interface mockups, including this Compendium aerial view by Jeff Conklin.
So, one of the Taskforces which emerges in ESSENCE could work on a GENIS-like use-case scenario (the report offers several) to serve as a pilot assessment of the pragmatics of GENIS…
This looks like a very synergistic effort that would be useful to reference as well: http://epi.visiblestrategies.com/
Impact Games is a very unique site that uses an interactive game paradigm to inform and promote critical thinking about a range of complex issues: http://playthenewsgame.com/portal/game.action?gameTurnId=276