HyperChat

To vastly oversimplify, HyperChat is going to be my implementation of an idea that was largely given to me by a book, David's Sling (ISBN 0671653695 – see in particular the "information duel" scenes.), though I may have taken some of the concepts and run with them further than envisioned by the author.

While hypertext and wiki are good tools for handling multithreaded discussion (see Issuepedia:Dispute Resolution Technology), they lack a certain ability to handle real-time discussion. "Chat" formats, such as IRC and IM, are excellent for realtime discussion and have very low barriers to participation (type something, hit enter; done), but again lack any innate thread-handling ability. It seems to me that some kind of hybrid between chat and hypertext, possibly with miniature windows instead of separate pages, should be developed. Chat also does not archive very well; many IRC clients can automatically log conversations, but there are very few tools for making such conversations available for further/future reference.

This is my project page for designing that hybrid solution, when I finally get time to work on it.

Links

• David Brin sets forth some related ideas
• Holocene Chat: another attempt to create "next generation" chat, although they apparently plan to patent what they develop :-(