Re: [projectvrm] #trust Measuring Trust

[Joe Andrieu < >]

Devon, your own words belie your argument. If trust can't be programmed in how can accountability?

I'm a big fan of accountability when it matters, but without trust, we have no freedoms. A system of perfect accountability is also one of complete control, and zero freedom. Big Brother is the icon of surveillance-based accountability. And we have way too much of that in our world. Applying that same thinking to vendors doesn't seem to help as much as it propagates the culture of patronizing control as a response to fear and mistrust.

We haven't yet established appropriate behavior. We need a consensus on that before we start locking things down. Strict enforcement of the unreasonable is what the callous dictator gets away with. We need to define what's reasonable and then build appropriate consequences to reinforce reasonable behavior.

Some of that will be about accountability, but I certainly hope it can also be an exercise in people and companies learning to behave themselves and not just a control framework for the powerful to make the weak do as they wish.

-j

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Joe Andrieu

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On Mar 22, 2013, at 7:44 AM, Devon M T Loffreto < "> > wrote:

Kevin,

That is an interesting model and theory... and I do not use those words with any disrespect intended.

"Trust" and "being trusted" or even further being "trustworthy" are not hard structural concerns. They involve "feelings" that are relative to Individual Humans.

The idea behind the use of "trust" online is interesting... and worthy of being instigated, challenged and demonstrated.

But there is a counter concept of "zero trust"... Eve Maler did a great presentation of this concept at an IIW a couple sessions back.

Accountability is a more meaningful concept in hard structural Terms than "trust" is... to me at least... in my experience.

I would prefer to operate in a "zero trust" infrastructure with accountability hard structured into participating roles. It does not matter if you are a vendor or a customer when your relationship to the infrastructure is equalized, because accountability can be processed equally. But in order to get there, we need to challenge the assumed model of the status quo where we create these liability models whereby *owners* and *employees* are given "liability control" within an exchange system in desperate need of more accurate accountability models than these administrative structures allow... and are different inherently than the control afforded customer roles.

"Trust" to me seems like a hack on the real problem that is not being confronted directly in its solution, and thus does not get us to an operating model that is accurate enough in the production of accountability... which is the real goal.

The market is irrational in so many ways... how can "trust" in an irrational system produce accountability with any significant degree of accuracy that is not dependent on top-down enforce-ability?

I am interested in keeping trust Human. I believe in trust. What I am not yet convinced of is the notion that it can be mapped to a technical infrastructure. I am hesitant of empowering the use of words that create big brother-esque double speak therein.

Devon Loffreto 

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 6:25 PM, Kevin Cox < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

John,

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 8:47 AM, John S James < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

The key word is "trusted." That's a central problem and issue on the Web.

We need to have some way of measuring trust.

When a relationship is established we work on the assumption that the other side can be trusted.  We specify the rules of the relationship.  If those rules are broken by one party or the other then the trust relationship between the parties is broken.  

If, when we go into a relationship, we agree that any break down will be publicly reported along with the parties and the reason for the breakdown then we can establish a measure of trust for entities by the ratio of trusted relationships to broken relationships.

Something along these lines can evolve if we have equal customer/vendor relationships.

We can achieve it incrementally.  When we implement an electronic vendor/customer relationship we can also specify what happens when the relationship breaks.  If we do enough of these and give ways of reporting the breaks then a trust measure will emerge.

Kevin