Okay I'm imagining a public debate platform based on twitter. You set up a time, a topic and a hashtag. Then people can log in with their twitter accounts and say something about the topic. When a thing is tweeted it shows up as a bubble floating at random around the screen. When you hover on the bubble it stops so you can read it. Then you have the option to retweet it . If you retweet it it the bubble get's bigger for you and everyone else viewing. You can tweet a new point, or you can just read and retweet what you agree with. The effect of this is a mass public discourse where thousands of people are 'heard' at the same time in real time.
Have you ever been in a speech or something where the speaker fields questions from the audience? If you weren't in a UN-style microphone-at-every-seat equipped room, then you probably saw one or two saps running the microphone around to those asking questions. I was this sap recently in a press conference, and although I consider myself quite agile, it still delayed things and was noisy for the cameras (not to mention my beautimous profile when I had to run in front of them). I've also heard people bragging about shot-gun mics that can pick up someone's voice leagues away. Couldn't these work in this situation, where the sap can just stand at the front with headphones on and point the mic at whoever is talking? Maybe it wouldn't work so well in a football stadium, but surely a 20-person press conference could manage. Right?
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