The Marginal Prophet

The Marginal Prophet take questions expressed Productive Margins literature and poses them to online AI-bots, in order to see if they can shed any light on the research questions.


AI-bots generally give very broad brush stroke answers to direct questions, very zen like statements, which the Marginal Prophet can take and then use as part of his own statement vocabulary ( he is not a charlatan, but see's himself as a conduit between two intelligence's) and use them when commenting on questions posed by the Productive Margins research.

Here are some links to AI-bots


Here are the questions to ask them

What would happen if diverse communities and academics came together to re-shape engagement, to work creatively with ideas that touch on society, law, history and art?

Can research release the creativity, knowledge and passions of communities at the margins of power to co-produce new forms of decision-making?

Who are we?

What are we researching?

How might groups whose views dissent from the mainstream be engaged to inform how social problems are understood and addressed?

What can we learn from previous examples of ideas (e.g. feminism, micro-finance, restorative justice) that were initially seen as marginal but have now been adopted by the mainstream?

What are the barriers to, and facilitators of, creating regulation for engagement?

Can arts practices be used to produce new spaces that resist recuperation by mainstream political structures?

If focusing on dissent leads to new forms of political, social and cultural experimentation, how can these be ‘scaled up’ to become part of more mainstream positions?

How are neighbourhoods understood by their residents?

What are the main similarities and differences between neighbours’ views of their neighbourhoods and what influences these?

How can social science researchers and community arts practitioners contribute to producing everyday stories about the past, present and future of neighbourhoods?

How can local perspectives on neighbourhood be used critically to enhance the official maps and top-down definitions of regulation?

How can digital spaces be harnessed to further community engagement? 

How can social media technologies such as Facebook, GIS, wikis and blogs be used more creatively to share information and co-produce knowledge? 

Can digital data be used to generate new understandings of everyday life?

Could an over-emphasis on the use of digital space erode a sense of community?

How do networks, systems and rules produced by digital providers support or hinder community engagement?

What future innovations can be imagined?  

How are we going to do it?

here are some of the bots replies


 jabberwoky wishes prophet to know that the answers are within


jabberwoky is very confident about the future



igods dealings with the Prophet are quite evasive.



cleverbot seems to distrust Prophets sentience.


whilst cleverbot here seems to treat Prophet with zen contempt.


 cleverbot knows the prophet is searching for answers to others questions.