Censorship, gagging, and centralized moderation, are the enemies of free thought and truth. Big statement huh? What do I mean by this? Well people should be given the right to determine what is worth reading and what isn’t worth reading. What I mean by ‘centralized moderation’ is a person, or group of individuals that have the power to delete, edit, or block what your have to say. Sure, people should be able to make recommendations on what is worth reading, but the information should still be there.

What the Internet is severely lacking is an infrastructure that allows for true freedom of speech by offering a networked web service for the collaborative review of all information available via the web. Simply put – forums and commenting systems suck! Scrolling down, reading post after post can be a nightmare. Having to sift through tonnes of data to get to the stuff that you are interested in. The truth is, the brain doesn’t work like that, it doesn’t store things in lists, it’s associative – it works in 3D!

What I propose is simple, yet powerful. A layer on top of the web browser that allows for the commenting of anything on the web. You could take a piece of content and comment on specific statements made within the content. Highlight the text and click comment. In doing so, you objectify (via respect, disdain, or evidence to either support, or debunk,) the thought or statement, and not the author of said statement. Content is safer broken into statements because it aids us in objectifying the content without any of the negative (and de-motivating), or positive (and ego boosting) connotations inherent in the review process. When others browse that content, as their mouse moves over the text. Little “nodes” gravitate towards the statement to indicate where someone has expressed an opinion on certain parts of the text. The web service that allows this is available to everyone and therefore opens the possibility to comment on any web based content, anywhere.

At any point we should be able to discount information from sources or networks that we have reason to distrust, and that distrust will be echoed in the luminescence of the node in question for all users.

The goal is to encourage the populous to place more value in self discovery, than indoctrination. To encourage research, objective and critical thinking, with the hope that a new internet, that shows in 3D the bigger picture, will emerge. With the hope that the prevalent perception of reality is based in reality, and not illusion. By empowering the people to broaden the foundations of their thoughts with observations that have been validated through the scientific method – unobstructed by vested interest.

The uses of this technology expand far beyond commenting. People may use this tool for education purposes, linking together pieces of content from different sources and allowing for the user to see the bigger picture. Another use may be interviewing. Often during a conversation, you may have and handful of questions for a single statement made by the person being interviewed and have to select one to ask. The resulting answer may raise another handful of questions, and so masses of information is being lost due to the linearity of the communication.

I will be writing more about this idea in the near future, but for now one thing is clear to me. If I’m going to make this a reality I am going to need the input of others, if you find this intriguing, please write to me, comment this post or follow this topic on my blog. I look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you for reading.