Supernova: John Clippinger, Social Physics

Classic notion of authority is to have the big leader, top down, etc.

Next generation web – small groups can organise and be as effective as large groups. Notion of authority is residue of middle ages. Seven levels of authority. Serf to King.

Adam Smith – two sides. Unless you have sense of empathy or sympathy and moral responsibility you can’t have the self-interest side either.

“These good acts give pleasure, but how it happens that they give us pleasure? Because nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct. In short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and succor their distresses.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1814

Humans are wired for trust:

Human brain evolved in part to read an dmanage complex social relationships. Behaviorual and neuro-economiosts found that people are not rational, maximising economic actors but risk trust to protect reputation and social norms. Economic “chioices” are not conscious – but a mid-brain function.

What is trust?

– evolutionary stable strategy tested through a variety of social species over millions of years of evolution.

– a pattern of neural pathways and dopamine circuits – embodied in the social emotions – mirror neurons.

– socially constructed and enforced ‘protocols’ that depend upon ‘honest signallying’, credible and equitable reputation accounting and outcomes, cheater-detection and enforcement.

Trust is more emotional than rational – you can’t make a distinction between rational thinking and emotional thinking.

Reputation and trust:

– Control through ‘reputation’ rather than ‘force’

– How someone is seen and rate by their social peers determines their standing and access

– Reputation scales faster and is less costly than force

– Emergent network roles and dynamic specialistaion

– Social identity an ‘social exchange value’ social currency is tired to context and reputation.

Network leadership roles – eight different people work in a network – exemplar, gatekeeper, visionary, truth-teller, fixed, connector, enforcer, facilitator.

Effective networks work well if these people are placed and operate effective.

{diagram of ‘netwoork role-based sense-making inter-networks}

SocialPhysics Platform – multiple identities and contexts – ‘you have many selves / different ways in which you perform in different networks’.

“Higgins Open Source Trust framework”

1. Create a framework / API – an abstraction layer for identity and social networking services

2. Create a set of exemplary context ‘provider’ implementations (plug-ins)

3. Create an exemplary appl that demonstrates how to use the extensible network

4. Enable developers to leverage higgins in their applications…

[Higgins Project: http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/etf/main.html and http://www.eclipse.org/higgins/ ]

Policy conversations: identity metasystem initiative…

http://cis-berkman.editme.com

Provocative Takeaways:

– trust is biological encoded and supported by social emotions

– can have principled strategies for achieving high levels of trusted exchange

– identitiy is multiple, distributed, contextual, role-based and reputatioonal

– markets are a kind of social networks and depend upon the social emotions -trust – empathy – reciprocity – to function

– long tailed markets are aggregates of social contexts

– trust feeds on transparency

[from backchannel: http://www.identityblog.com/stories/2004/12/09/thelaws.html]

[http://www.google.com/search?q=trust+serotonin+oxytocin ]

Technorati Tags: