...will be an incubator of social entrepreneurial projects, (both commercial as well as not) with an eye on very "big picture" topics, for instance:
The internet has ravaged every sector of society since the beginning of mass adoption ca 1995, with one notable exception: governance.
The legacy assumptions underpinning the balance struck between representative and direct democracy paradigms are 300ish years old. And the technology available to lawmakers to gather, process, and output the information related to public affairs has likewise remained in a previous era.
We ask: "Shouldn't there be better interfaces for question asking, deliberation, consensus, and suggestion formulation?"
Rather than assume we are all stuck with two obsolete, low resolution media with which to allocate public knowledge and resources (the Democratic and Republican parties), why not look at the significant disconnect between the "will of the people" and the current interface responsible for public decision-making as an absolutely historic design opportunity?
In the words of the visionary thinker Buckminster Fuller:
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
If any of this excites you, please get in touch:
instituteofwhatif@gmail.com