[ExI] Social Graph visibility akin to pain reflex

[B.K. DeLong]

On Feb 3, 2008 2:04 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at comcast.net> wrote:
> B.K. DeLong wrote:
> >
> > Each person would then be assigned a trust metric based on my comfort
> > level in sharing information with them. Then each group would be
> > assigned a trust metric as well. The, ideally, I'd be able to use the
> > trust metric to inform my privacy preferences only letting certain
> > people with a trust level above X to see Y information.
> >
> > My trust could/would then be further informed by friends. If I trust
> > one friend Alice n + 4 and trust another friend Bob only n + 2 but
> > they were friends with each other then I'd use Alice's trust metric to
> > at least help inform my own. I should, in theory, be able to set the
> > degree to which a friend's trust metric of another friend will change
> > my trust in that other friend. ;)

> Another problem is you need to have an efficient way to collect and
> state POV reputation information from large groups of people, or the
> entire network, in efficient, concise, and quantitative ways.  Trivial 5
> star rating system, fixed surveyors, or Thousands of individual
> testimonials don't work.  You've got to group these testimonials into
> similar POV "camps" and design a system with natural pressures that
> encourage them to be concise in a collaborative / wiki kind of way,
> while having the ability to filter out the untrustworthy / poor quality
> stuff.  You can't expect everyone to write a testimonial on everything,
> but simply joining a POV camp is trivial.
>
> Yet another problem is Transhumanists don't trust people Luddites trust,
> Christians don't trust people Atheists trust, and so on.  You've got to
> have a way to give people the ability to compensate for this.  You want
> to be able to only value trust specified by people in the network with
> attributes or reputations you choose to trust.

This is why standard schemas and metadata are so vitally important -
we need a standard set of values to define what someone may perceive
to be a personal viewpoint or position on on a particular issue. Of
course we may run into permutations like "non-believers" instead of
"atheists" but there's got to be some way to handle mapping of those.

That may also rely on self-identification of a particular viewpoint.
Facebook has done a decent job of allowing people to self-identify of
fans of a particular thing and some add-on applications the ability to
affiliate with a political party, group or set of beliefs. Ideally,
those apps would be using an underlying standard schema to define the
various political positions a person is taking so someone else could
come in and assign trust metrics to any person who identified as
Democrat or "Conservative" or voted a particular way to polling
questions. The problem you run into is the amount of time it takes to
assign trust metrics in a poll - obviously one can opt-in to do
metrics in the first place.


> If everyone sending e-mail, posting a post, calling on the phone,
> expressing a moral opinion, knocking on your door as a missionary,
> soliciting business, selling a product, posting an advertisement
> (including the products, advertisements... themselves)... has a
> quantitative and concise POV reputation value, based on people with
> attributes you chose to trust, then suddenly the world takes a quantum
> leap in its morality, civility, and efficiency.
>
> Suddenly all the spam and scam completely and naturally disappear
> because the entire network can quantitatively communicate POV reputation
> information to each individual.  This giving each individual in the
> network the ability to simply ignore all the spam and scam.  You no
> longer need laws, lawyers, big brother type government controls / police
> states.  You just don't do business with, accept e-mail from, download a
> file from, anyone until they have a good reputation, and you do
> everything in your power to keep that reputation because if it ever
> goes, your life becomes hell, until you make a full restitution to those
> in your negative reputation camp, and win them back over to your good
> reputation camp.

Sounds like a wuffie-based society to me . ;)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuffie]

You make an interesting point. Many corporations are starting to
tackle the issue of data classification as a means of better dealing
with information protection and protecting against "data breaches".
Currently, they don't know what they don't know or have any reasonable
means (when say a laptop of stolen) of knowing precisely what was on
that laptop. Nor do many have a means of protecting data based on its
classification (internal only, confidential, public) because none of
it is classified. If people began classifying everything they do at
work then it becomes an easier practice to implement in their social
(networking) life - especially the more time they spend online or on a
computer.


-- 
B.K. DeLong (K3GRN)
bkdelong at pobox.com
+1.617.797.8471

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