This is the first post in the "Map articulating all talking (Maat)" sequence in which I discuss mass communication, a particular class of issues affecting it, and a sketch of an experimental social media platform which might alleviate these issues.

I'm hoping this sequence will be of interest to people generally interested in these issues, developers who may wish to draw inspiration from these ideas or contribute to a Maat project, and start up funders or founders who would be interested in funding or founding a project based on these ideas. I am also interested in using these posts to further develop my thinking and gain awareness of related concepts and projects, so please share your own ideas in the comments.

I will first write a post or two focused on mass communication in general to serve as grounding context. I'll then discuss the class of issues I'm interested in, those which are not in the technological implementation or in human psychology, but issues with the structure and dynamics of communication itself. I have 5 example issues to discuss:

• Inferential distance & conversation/idea complexity is not readily or commonly communicated.
• Similar conversations happen independently of one another.
• Finding novel ideas in mass conversation is like searching for a needle in a haystack. And it's bone needle, not a magnetic one.
• Emphatic arguments are selected for instead of effective ones.
• Tracking claims & predictions is made difficult by the fuzzy nature of statements and mercurial focus shifting in response to a constant stream of new information.

After those I plan to describe a rough plan for a social media platform that might address some of these issues, thereby improving the efficiency and effectiveness of mass communication.