[art] Manifesto for the Reputation Society by Hassan Masum and Yi–Cheng Zhang

Information overload, challenges of evaluating quality, and the opportunity to benefit from experiences of others have spurred the development of reputation systems. Most Internet sites which mediate between large numbers of people use some form of reputation mechanism: Slashdot, eBay, ePinions, Amazon, and Google all make use of collaborative filtering, recommender systems, or shared judgements of quality.

But we suggest the potential utility of reputation services is far greater, touching nearly every aspect of society. By leveraging our limited and local human judgement power with collective networked filtering, it is possible to promote an interconnected ecology of socially beneficial reputation systems — to restrain the baser side of human nature, while unleashing positive social changes and enabling the realization of ever higher goals.

Contents

Introduction

Search

Communicating with peers

Filtering

Trade

Culture

Risks

Ideosphere

Conclusion

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Introduction

The emergence of reputation systems

How do we identify what is good? And how do we censure what is bad? We will argue that developing a humane reputation system ecology can provide better answers to these two general questions — restraining the baser side of human nature, while liberating the human spirit to reach for ever higher goals.

Most social interactions require matching human needs on the one hand, and quality or taste on the other hand: hunting for a reliable mechanic, looking for an interesting book, sifting through potential investments, judging the merits of proposed policies. Drawing from a distributed pool of reputations has the potential to ease the search for opportunities, ideas, friendships, cultural goods, and high–quality services; hand in hand, pressure will increase for honest behavior, competence, and fulfilling subtle human needs. At the same time, more efficient tagging of con artists, sources of spam, untrue claims, and dishonest actions can better sanction antisocial behavior, for the most part in a bottom–up «distributed court of opinion.»

Sustained rapid advances in information technology have created unprecedented abilities, which come along with unprecedented dilemmas. Data has never been easier to create and move around, but to make decisions one also needs to understand its context and implications. Just as important is what lies behind its face value, in realms such as speculative bubbles (Chancellor, 2000), shady financial practices (Partnoy, 2004), and the political statements that are the topic of much of our public discourse. (leer más…)

Fuente: [first monday]