The idea is to make tools that make it easy to perform inquiry and research publicly.
You want a laser based display.
You go to a website, and type some inquiries into a text box:
You then go web browsing. When you find something interesting, you hit a bookmarklet, and attach the page link to one or more of the questions. You can also attach notes to the questions, attach notes to the links, and change the landscape of questions that you are asking.
Other people should be able to observe your questioning and research process. People should be able to suggest answers to questions, and links to help supply answers to questions.
One thing I think that is really interesting about this, is that you can then directly ask: “What questions are people asking, that they are using this page to answer?”
So, say you are looking at “InquiryLog,” here on CommunityWiki. If someone had registered it in the system, you can then, theoretically, go look up why they were interested in this page.
With tagging systems, it should be possible to see, “how did people tag this?” With inquiry systems, it should be possible to see, “What question were they asking, when they saw this?”
It’s a little more specific than the question: “What search terms were they using, when they came up with this page?”
question questions inquiry research log logs
Lion, InquiryLog would be totally possible to do in TeleCommuntySoftware?. If you go to The Social Synergy TeleCommunity and register, you can then drag the “Your WebAssistant?” bookmark to your browser toolbar. Now, you can either store clippings or links, or your own ongoing notebook in your WebDB? (WebDatabase?), or, you can create a WebDesk? based on your inquiry. Then, you can click on the “Your WebAssistant?” link on your browser tool bar and and choose the WebDesk? that you have created. Then, you could create a “new category” for each subquery like what you have above with the laser example. Then you could attach each link to it’s respective category. The whole webdesk can then be published in either a non-flash, flash, or graphic version. You can make a WebConversation?, or a WebWorkspace? (a wiki-like page) and attatch those to as many categories as you like for people to leave feedback. People can also leave feedback anywhere in a WebDB?.
As for Open research, we are very interested in this concept, and we definitely encourage open research processes. In fact, we want to create a knowledge commons, and we are trying to create an effective toolset that enables that. So, when people store items in their WebDB?, they can share them in what we call a TeleCommunity? Exchange. Here are some examples:
The TC exchange allows you to search by keyword, and shows relevant items to whatever you are looking at based on keywords.
I would actually be very interested in using the Social synergy TeleCommunity? in tandem with CommunityWiki as a space to research the the concept of Open Research and/or InquiryLog ideas.
You are all free to register and use the software at the Social Synergy TeleCommunity?, of course. It’s fairly straightforward software to use, but don’t hesitate to email me with questions about it. I’ll work on an InquiryLog example tomorrow.
Ok, here is an example, based on questions about spreading messages online.
Does this resemble anything near what you had in mind?