Communications technology that is or will soon be available can help create better opportunities for mass discussions about public issues. The hardware and software prerequisites for such discussions are: capacity to address participants, facilities for real-time dialogue between geographically dispersed groups, continuous feedback between audience and broadcasters, techniques for recording responses and reporting group feelings, provisions for injecting expert information into the dialogue, rules to regulate access, and provisions for subpopulation in inter-subpopulation dialogue. With these facilities millions of participants could be subdivided into a network of discussion groups. Groups of up to 30 could be formed by conference telephones, small communities of up to 2,000 could take part in discussions via two-way cable television, intermediate communities of up to 40,000 by radio, television and regular telephones, and larger entities could be made of networks linking all of the above. (MG)