Michael Hoffman, an associate professor in the School of Public Policy, gives an informal talk presenting the basic ideas and first steps of a new project: "AGORA: Participate - Deliberate!" A main purpose of the presentation is to stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration with others in the Georgia Tech community who are working on similar projects.

The objective of the AGORA project is to develop an interactive web technology that makes large-scale deliberation more effective and efficient. In a Greek city, the "agora" is an open place in the middle of town where citizens come together for all kinds of public purposes. Our AGORA provides a space to interact with others, to engage the representation and discussion of a diversity of perspectives, to develop and refine positions in social interaction, and to clarify controversies by visualizing the best possible argumentation for each point of view. The AGORA is a virtual online world in which users can walk around, find interesting discussions in which they can participate, or create their own topics for a debate.

Positions are mainly represented in the form of argument maps. These maps visualize the structure of reasons and background assumptions on which claims are based. These visualizations of reasoning motivate objections and critique which again lead to further justifications or the refinement of arguments. AGORA web applications can be implemented in projects that focus on (a) participatory democracy on the global, national, or local level; (b) scientific problems that require large-scale or interdisciplinary collaboration and debate; (c) collaborative structuring of knowledge; (d) conflict management; and (e) educating the next generation of critical thinkers.