Starting at about 6:12 into the video 09 Wikimainia Growth Limits (but watch the whole thing, please), Ward Cunningham says, "As things get copied around, it means that there is a place in the network where there is a balance of perspectives, and that's the place where I argued that the new framing of understanding needs to be to create the initiative that we need to tackle these large problems."
That is to say, to me at least, in a federated wiki, over time, through copying, editing, and refactoring, between even the most extreme viewpoints, there will emerge a common ground from which we might be able to act on any issue, and Ward is speaking about huge issues here like climate change, or the limits of growth or energy expenditure. The media - -federated wiki -- becomes meaning, or resolves meaning out of conflict.
It seems revolutionary to me, the eternal radical optimist, but Ward delivers it in a very matter-of-fact manner.