casting about in the light of the net
I’ve seen several people blog on the subject of trust and networks lately. My thoughts in this post are not direct – i’m trying to sythesize some common threads here. Perhaps my readers will enjoy parts of the journey i’ve taken myself. if not… skip ahead a bit…
Joi comments about developing trust and networks and finding a job. Antoin discusses trusting the voting system (and i dropped a couple links into a comment there). Digging way back in the archive (because it’s related to more recent material), Tim Oren talks about “venture capital, trust networks, and information theory.” Ross Mayfield has some thoughts on Joi’s thoughts.
Also, in the weblog way-back machine, there is a set of comments i made over at the Venture Blog on the subject of “getting to know” a potential business partner (and quite possibly shooting myself in the foot in the process).
outside the realm of the link-i-verse, i’ve recently discussed or read material on the subjects of id systems, contracts for cd baby, record label cartels, diamond cartels, the commercialization of blogs and the growth of “social networking” websites.
finally, well outside the blog-i-verse there was a recent piece in the New Scientist about personal information floating around in the dimly-lit corners of the web.
which, handily brings me to the metaphor i wanted to discuss. diogenes. diogenes is a metaphor today because he carried a lantern in broad daylight, and looked into the faces of his fellow greeks, in search of “an honest man.” now, whether diogenes himself was up to his own standards (and, really, who among us are?) is an open question. (ok, so the truth is he was probably a complete nutball, but i know his name a couple thousand years later, and that’s saying something.
now fortified with linkage and metaphor, i’m going to ask the question:
with all this technology, and these expanding human networks that literally span the globe and the clock, is there, today, enough “light” to find an honest man?