Joey, the Accordian Guy has posted about next generation blogging. Blogs have kind of hit a wall and some people I have read over recent months have packed it in. There are some pretty valid reasons for that, some of which I discussed last fall. You place your opinion on the chopping table and expose your inability to spell, express, think and recount. You are often wrong, irrelevant, unentertaining. Most of all, however, you are stuck in a small world. Some describe the small world as the "echo chamber" where only the agreeable respond - this can be as busy as Howard Dean's Blog for America but it is still a monoculture. The "echo chamber" can also mean you only hear the sound of your own voice.

What to do about that? Some are moving to group blogs on specific topics. Can an extra layer of discussion be placed above blogs to develop ideas collectively rather than only state the views of individuals? I have had the pleasure of working with an intranet which has many of the project based discussion technology that allows teams to work together and see in that model the opportunity (but not the web application) to develop something you can think of as a congress tool. Here are some of the elements I would like to see in a "webislature":

• Access to anyone but reasonable expectation that it would attract the busy blogger;

• Upon application you would declare general position and be assigned preferences and authorizations which would place you on the political spectrum;

• You would, accordingly, be assigned to a party and with your party, through password entry only web spaces, hold caucuses and develop ideas with those in common;

• Those ideas would be debated by all on the main floor and voted upon;

• The main floor and the caucuses would be moderated and chaired;

• Parties would be limited to 60 to 100 members and each congress would have maximum populations of 300 to 500;

• Multiple congresses could debate the same ideas concurrently and collectively vote.

• Also, similar cross-congress parties could also express joint statements.

Why do all this? There is a chattering web class that would take it up and who would enjoy moving to the next level, expressing and developing ideas in a way that overcomes the dominance and focus of the A-list bloggers who largely earn their place through simple longevity or technical nerdy capacity - neither being strong indicia in themselves alone of valid opinions on policy. It would compliment blogs rather than replace them so there would be no required shift from one way of doing things, from the current technology and all the big voices would still be there along with all the little ones like me. It would also provide for a parallel virtual forum for the development of policy, fulfilling more directly the wish of many bloggers to put on the table how they really wish the world worked but without the monoculture of the "echo chamber".

This would be a massive enterprise that, like Blogshares, would require great technical support without the definite prospect of financial return. But if you ask me what I want added to the "blogosphere", it is something like that.