Webcracy

What are you thinking ?

When you’re walking down the street, preparing to take the metro’s staircase, waiting for the bus, looking at a beautiful anything, etc.

Quickly share your thoughts at the nearest conveniently placed thought booth.

What is a thought booth?

* It might resemble a public phone booth, but with no phone. A keyboard, a couple of screens, a webcam, and some twitter-clone running on a machine connected to the Internet;
* It takes your picture, you type whatever you want (preferably a thought), press enter and it all goes online to a free, worldwide twitter-like network with a nice interface, showing your face, your thought and your location (it could have some cool other features);
* There should be a human nearby to help operate it.

How do you make a thought booth ?

* Select a location for your thought booth by wardriving or warwalking because you need WiFi (or not);
* Design a sexy booth and a thought-sharing machine, estimate a building and operating budget and find the money;

How do you make a though-sharing machine?

* A keyboard or other hardware that will function likewise,
* A webcam,
* An Internet connexion,
* A special access to a special site that requires you to create an account, input the GPS location of your booth, upload a picture of your booth, describe your hardware configuration, comment on your intentions, give some details about yourself, and that will ultimately grant you access to the world’s thoughs in real time,
* Two (2) screens, one for the user’s input, the other to show the world’s thoughts through a website

Website?

We should probably start with building the website… but this is the era of the mashup and collaborative work, right? It’ll be up in no time.

Tips

* Find a filthy rich company to finance your thought booth, they like to show they care and we like them to show they care
* Wardriving and warwarlking are great. Remember to get a permission to use that perfect hotspot, though
* Make your thought booth accessible, because one great thing about thought booths is that anyone can share thoughts
* Make your thought booth environment-friendly
* Don’t hurt any animals
* Don’t ask your users for money, under any circumstance or for whatever reason (cf. first tip)
* Yes, yes, your booth can be temporary

Now what?

* Digg this post, share it, create the love
* Show interest and offer your time and skills to make the website
* Build and operate booths all around the world
* Let’s all have a wiki !

To be continued?

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