The Challenge of Identifying Public Wisdom on Sustainability Issues

Tim van Gelder (University of Melbourne)

Abstract: In the 2012 MSSI volume 2020: Vision for a Sustainable Society I made the case for developing online platforms for identifying public wisdom on major issues, including sustainability issues, as an alternative to standard kinds of deliberative democracy.  In 2013 an approach along these lines was given a vigorous test when Fairfax incorporated a platform we had developed, YourView, into their federal election coverage.  In this informal session
Tim will briefly:

- Recap the motivation for developing online platforms for public wisdom
- Describe the Fairfax/YourView Election project and its results
- Reflect on what we learned from that project

setting the stage for some general discussion about the prospects for large-scale, online deliberative democracy.