A few years ago, Apple ran an ad campaign around the idea of ripping, re-mixing, and burning your own music. It was a sign of the times, when consumers were no longer content to just accept pre-packaged music from the record companies. We wanted to flex our own creative muscles, and our own self expression.
The same thing that happened with CDs and music is also continuing to happen in the world of books and ideas. This is nothing new. The sharing and remixing of ideas is as old as humanity. However, I believe that the mechanisms for this have not yet entered their prime. Peer-reviewed scientific publishing for example, has exacting rules for contributing and having your ideas vetted by others. More recently, the Internet and blogs have given anyone with Internet access the power to publish their ideas around the world. However, I believe that we still don't have the right systems in place to allow free but structured re-thinking to take place.
One issue is context. It is not easy to find all the people who are interested and writing about a given subject, and put everyone in a collaborative context. Wikipedia is an example of a system that harnesses mass collaboration, but it is in fact the antithesis of discourse - it is about finding the lowest common denominator - which is perfect for what it is meant to do: Synthesizing facts.
How do we construct a system that harnesses mass discourse to both explore different ideas, and synthesize new ones?