Above All Else Is Trust

It’s an Ideology, Stupid

And the great thing about the Connectivity faith is that, like previous religions, it subsumes everything that was there already. Some of the most passionate capitalism on view is displayed by network start-ups. Some of the most idealistic exponents of Open Access, Data and all other Opens, belong to sects that would make the Diggers and the Levellers look right wing. All human kind is here, subscribing to the basic rules of connection, mark-up, content organization and retrieval. This is probably the greatest number of people all subscribing to the same rulebook that planet Earth has ever seen.

I can’t agree with his argument that connectivity is an ideology. I think the ideology precedes the connectivity and it’s the connectivity that’s finally allowed massive numbers of people to compare notes and find many points of agreement and to therefore gather in like-minded groups quickly and easily without the limitations of either time or distance.

It’s his list of consequences that are very interesting, however, and make the post really worth reading.

For me, the most important point is this:

New levels of public and private trust will need to be created as more and more people “meet” for the first time online — and never meet in person. Close work colleagues may never physically meet. The signals given by voice and video will be closely examined as each of us strives to recognize ”trustworthy” behaviour and indicate it to others. This will be part data analytics, part screen and keyboard performance analytics, and part, as now, pure hunch.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Trust is something I’ve written about before, several times, one of which is here: The Ultimate Weapon Is Trust.

Trust sounds like a simple concept and most people think they know what it means.

But it’s far deeper than many people grasp. People often mix it up with other things, such as reliability, predictability, charismatic affect, honesty, or even — most foolishly — obedience.

Some day I might have to write about this, but it requires a hell of a lot of thinking to parse it all out. For now, understand that the most important thing in the future will not be money or possessions or even any ideology — it’ll be trust.