Thinking INSIDE The Box

I've been thinking a lot lately about the Semantic Web in general and the pinnacle of its various protocols in particular--i.e., Trust.  Call it a blinding flash of the obvious, but it occurs to me that "trust" is one of those often re-licensed words that, accordingly, means a lot of different things: things that can only be fully defined within a specific context.

But, rather than digress further into the semantics of trust here, I was struck by another, truly blinding, insight as I read through Jeff Jarvis' excellent new book What Would Google Do? 

http://www.amazon.com/What-Would-Google-Jeff-Jarvis/dp/0061709719/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242001215&sr=8-1

Specifically, Mr. Jarvis notes that, in the new Web world, Control drives Trust; in other words, participatory Web 2.0 types tend to flock to sites that seem to trust them (by yielding as much control as possible) and they flee from the rest.

This idea then completed another neural circuit in my limited-capacity brain, as it reminded me of a recent conversation with "the father of healthcare consumerism"--Ron Bachman

http://www.healthcarevisions.net/page/page/2641658.htm

And, as Ron pointed out, the inverse relationship between Trust and Security (i.e., the less secure we feel, the more likely we are to trust any leader that can convincingly promise to restore it) I suggested that there's orthogonal relationship here to control as well! That is, the same anxious individual will yield control (and freedom) as well. But, by the same token, an expansion of trust begets an expansion in both security and perceived control!

Thus, the counter-intuitive demi-discovery here (at least for me) is that effective web volume can be exponentially expanded (i.e., the sum of all three dimensions depicted below) with each incremental expansion of any!

I'll call it the "Bachman factor."  Think about it...and, drop a comment if you'd like

 

Comments

[Blank Bullets]

As the Laugh-In nazi used to say "Verrry Intresstinng; but...";-)

[Doug]

Well...thanks Blank. But...what part was "interrestinng"?

[REB]

The actual Bachman thesis is that freedom and security are opposites. The link between the two is trust. When trust is lacking, peple tend towards the promise of security. You can not have freedom without trust. For web 2.0, one enjoys the freedom of community groups if the user trusts that they have not been manipulated into a limited number of community choices that have a limited point of view. In web 3.0 one can accept anticipatory guidance, if there is trust that the system is treating me fairly and with my interests at heart. Once I loose trust in Web 2.0 or web 3.0, I will drop back to the security of credentialled sources, trusted familar links, or revert to non-web personal sources of contacts and information. Thus, without trust that the web is secure, protects privacy, and is agnostic in directing and producing option the web evolution will fail.

[Doug]

Bo (I mean Ron)-

SO good to hear from you! And thanks for the clarification.
My "orthogonal" view may have only tended to obfuscate; but, as you know, IMHO most 2x2 (matrix) stories have a third dimension lurking at their edge. In this case,I see "freedom" not so much as "opposite" but, rather, perpendicular to trust. Moreover, in my construct, it's labeled as a variable of "control." And, it's here that the Jarvis' insight plays: i.e., when I trust (or more to his point, when I'm trusted) I tend to feel both more in control and secure. Thus, my 3D take on the "Bachman Factor";-)

BTW: I've lost the link to your BLOG?

[REB]

www.cht.typepad.com/consumerism

It is more of a resource and library at this point than a real blog. The CHT Er group is working on what they want - Mainly to discuss and research other employer interests and solutions in the high cost diagnoses.