Kevin: Craig Newmark of Craig's List has been talking about trust for a while now, including trust in how it relates to news and journalism. He recently spoke at the Reynolds Institute at the University of Missouri. His basic thesis is this: "By the end of this decade, power and influence will shift largely to those people with the best reputations and trust networks, from people with money and nominal power."
I think we will see a shift, but I think that money and nominal power will still play a huge role in our societies and in our politics, sadly.

Kevin: On Techdirt, some more critical comments about the iPad and the hopes and dreams of media companies. This one really struck me, and it's a question that I've had as well. "A few months back, I tried to ask a simple question that we still haven't received a good answer to: all of these media companies, thinking that iPad apps are somehow revolutionary, don't explain why they never put that same functionality online. They could. But didn't." The one issue I would say is that the iPad's gestural interface does change what's possible, both in new opportunities and new limits. I definitely agree that many in the media look at the iPad as yet another way to create artificial scarcity. I doubt that it will work, especially because the media in its apps madness seem to forget that the iPad has a web browser.