'What is the psychospiritual significance of the mythical labyrinth? The labyrinth can be seen as an archetypal symbol of the psyche and of what C.G. Jung called the individuation process: that twisty, unpredictable, tortuous, serpentine path toward wholeness and authenticity. The goal is to reach the center, the Self, the core of our being. But this is only half the journey. For having discovered the inner center with it's treasure, the "pearl of great price," is not sufficient: One must then find a way out of the labyrinth and back to the outer world – forever transformed by this experience. And this inward and outward expedition is repeated over and over, each time yielding new riches. Psychotherapy itself can be such a labyrinthine process. Patients often seek psychotherapy because they feel alone and hopeless, confused and abandoned, much like the unlucky lost souls caught in the mythic labyrinth. Indeed, as for those suffering victims, suicide sometimes seems the only way out of the labyrinth. The impenetrable darkness, disorientation, discouragement and deep dread of the unknown may be intolerable at times. What is it about the inescapable labyrinth that makes it so tragically intolerable? Perhaps it is precisely the immense nothingness and darkness of the labyrinth that we humans find most frightening: Such places echo or reflect back to us that which dwells in the deepest, darkest recesses of our own psyche. Whatever it is we fear most – and therefore flee from – is called forth and amplified by the lightless labyrinth. The psychotherapy patient too is heroic, sacrificing his or her narcissistic arrogance by seeking help, facing fear of the unknown, willingly walking into the labyrinth and confronting his or her own personal Minotaur. When the psychotherapist invites and encourages the patient to explore the labyrinth – the unknown, the unconscious, the shadow, the daimonic – we bestow the gifts of Ariadne: the empowering sword of strength, courage, and rational, logical, analytical insight, and the means to remain tangibly tethered, rooted, related and connected to us, to reality, to the light, to humanity, to the outer, material world – and to one's self. These are essential tools for the task. Venturing into the labyrinth improperly equipped and prepared is a perilous and foolhardy undertaking for both therapist and patient, courting catastrophe. In psychotherapy, the Ariadnean thread symbolizes both the therapeutic relationship – the strong, supportive, vital, empathetic tie between patient and therapist – as well as the struggling and disoriented hero-patient's still undiscovered destiny.'

'Trust is built when no one is looking, when you think you have the option of cutting corners and when you find a loophole. Trustiness is what happens when you use trust as a PR tool. The difference should be obvious. Trust experienced is remarkable, trustiness once discovered leaves a bad taste for even your most valued customers. The perverse irony is this: the more you work on your trustiness, the harder you fall once people discover that they were tricked.'

'In his paper about online trust, Coye Cheshire points how automated trust systems undermine trust itself by incentivizing cooperation because of the fear of punishment rather than actual trust among people. Cheshire argues that: "strong forms of online security and assurance can supplant, rather than enhance, trust." Leading to what he calls the trust paradox: "assurance structures designed to make interpersonal trust possible in uncertain environments undermine the need for trust in the first place." In many scenarios, automation is quite useful, but with social interactions, removing friction can have a harmful effect on the social bonds established through friction itself. In other cases, as Shauna points out, ”social networking sites are good for relationships so tenuous they couldn’t really bear any friction at all.”'

"Within our own biology, we have the yin and yang of morality: We have oxytocin that connects us to others, makes us feel what they feel, and we have testosterone that makes us want to punish people who behave immorally. We don't need God or Government telling us what to do. It's all inside of us."

'#Trust as Currency: Consider this example: Condie, who has no rep good or bad, posts a $1,050 escrow bond. The bondsman mints $1,000 worth of “trust Condie” coins and exchanges them for Condie's money. Condie then offers to paint your house for $100. You agree on terms and chop a contract. She gives you a $100 “Trust Condie” coin to back up her commitment of “satisfaction guaranteed for 30 days or your money back”. If Condie does good work you pay her. A month later you return her coin. If she spills paint on your driveway you redeem the coin from the bondsman with a copy of the contract and a photo. The coin is your proof that Condie is bonded and has not overextended her bond. Likewise she can redeem them all herself at any time for her deposit less fee. This works because the currency is specific to the trustee. It's not the same as Condie giving you a $100 coin of more broadly negotiable currency. You can only redeem it from the bondsman and only with evidence of misconduct.''

'...guanxi describes a personal connection between two people in which one is able to prevail upon another to perform a favor or service, or be prevailed upon. The two people need not be of equal social status. Someone is described as having good guanxi if their particular network of influence could assist in the resolution of the problem currently being spoken about. ...guanxi can describe a state of general understanding between two people: "he/she is aware of my wants/needs and will take them into account when deciding her/his course of future actions which concern or could concern me without any specific discussion or request". It is custom for Chinese people to cultivate an intricate web of guanxi relationships, which may expand in a huge number of directions, and includes lifelong relationships. Reciprocal favors are the key factor to maintaining one’s guanxi web, failure to reciprocate is considered an unforgivable offense. The more you ask of someone the more you owe them.'

'Guanxi operates as essentially a private favor exchange. If I can organize a chain of value exchange among my web threads that results in getting something that I want, then I can execute a Guanxi transaction (or chain transaction). The system is lubricated by the concept of a Guanxi Debt. I can utilize the system for short-term needs certainly, and that is a very common aspect of the system. But I can also incur or accrue Guanxi that (if managed wisely) can be utilized for larger purposes at a later time. Naturally, such favors often have financial components. Even the outright sale of Guanxi is common. ...Guanxi is like your brain, or your muscles. It must be used in order to grow strong or stay sharp. Since everybody is operating within the same system, if I develop some particularly important Guanxi thread, but then don’t use it, I will lose it. This is because the Guanxi thread is established by mutual agreement. The opposite party has also made his or her calculations...'

'A distributed contract is a method of using Bitcoin to form agreements with people, anonymously and without the need for trust. -- Every transaction can have a lock time associated with it. This allows the transaction to be pending and replaceable until an agreed upon future time, specified either as a block index or as a timestamp.'

'What matters in the new era is not your physical wealth, but your reputation. As long as you’ve built up a rep for trustworthiness, there’s no reason you can’t benefit from access to a wealth of products and services when you need them. The trend isn’t entirely new — we’ve had toy libraries since the 1930s...'

'The role of reputation systems is to facilitate trust by making reputation more visible. Reputation systems may also be coupled with an incentive system to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior. For instance, users with high reputation may be granted special privileges, whereas users with low or unestablished reputation may have limited privileges. -- Rheingold inclines that [online reputation systems] arose as a result of the need for Internet users to gain trust in the individuals they transact with online. The innate trait he makes note of in humans is that functions of society such as gossip 'keeps us up to date on who to trust, who other people trust, who is important, and who decides who is important'. Internet sites such as eBay and Amazon he argues seek to service this consumer trait and are 'built around the contributions of millions of customers, enhanced by reputation systems that police the quality of the content and transactions exchanged through the site'.'

JA: 'Who is the actual audience of the material that we release? Is it the general public? Is it actually the organization that it comes from? The sort of dissenters of that organization? The whole organization can become incredibly paranoid. If it is a closed secretive organization and information starts leaking out, it can become incredibly paranoid about who is doing some of this on the inside. No one trust insides anymore in the organization, they stop communication, with each other, they don’t trust their telephone lines, they don’t trust their computers. It can not think anymore as a group or as an organization. It can no longer out think its competitors. [...they fall in on themselves] ....they are no longer competitive as an organization compared to all those organizations that are more open than their opponents. So the power of these organizations start to shrink. And the market gap is then taken up by the more open organization that does not have the problem of secrecy.'

'...the ultimate commodity in which to invest is not gold or shotgun shells but people you can trust.'

'Ripple is a monetary system that makes simple obligations between friends as useful for making payments as regular money. -- You create a profile on the system and indicate who you know and how much you trust them by connecting to people by email address and giving them credit limits. Then whenever you want to make a payment to another Ripple user using only friendly obligations, the system finds a chain of intermediaries connecting you to the person you want to pay, and records the payment in each intermediary's account all the way down the chain. You end up owing one of your "neighbours" on the system, and the payment recipient ends up being owed by one of her neighbours.' -- Clever, but not anonymous or untraceable.

'In a stateless society, contracts with DROs are required to maintain any sort of economic life—without DRO representation, citizens are unable to get a job, hire employees, rent a car, buy a house or send their children to school. DROs would have clauses allowing you to cancel your coverage, just as insurance companies have now. Thus you would have to notify your DRO that you were dropping coverage. No problem, you’re off their list. However, DROs as a whole really need to keep track of people who have opted out of the entire DRO system, since those people have clearly signaled their intention to go rogue, to live off the grid, and commit crimes. Thus if you cancel your DRO insurance, your name goes into a database available to all DROs. If you sign up with another DRO, no problem, your name is taken out. However, if you do not sign up with any other DRO, red flags pop up all over the system. What happens then?' -- You either rejoin an existing DRO or you start your own.

Challenging the accepted history/theory that fixed weights were the standard of value for money metals and arguing instead coins were simply credit money tokens. -- 'The value of a credit depends not on the existence of any gold or silver or other property behind it, but solely on the “solvency” of the debtor, and that depends solely on whether, when the debt becomes due, he in his turn has sufficient credits on others to set off against his debts. If the debtor neither possesses nor can acquire credits which can be offset against his debts, then the possession of those debts is of no value to the creditors who own them. It is by selling, I repeat, and by selling alone—whether it be by the sale of property or the sale of the use of our talents or of our land—that we acquire the credits by which we liberate ourselves from debt, and it is by his selling power that a prudent banker estimates his client’s value as a debtor.' -- Also mention of tally sticks, aes rude and tablets.

'...the Internet is shackling us to everything that we have ever said, or that anyone has said about us, making the possibility of digital self-reinvention seem like an ideal from a distant era. -- In the Web 3.0 world, Fertik predicts, people will be rated, assessed and scored based not on their creditworthiness but on their trustworthiness as good parents, good dates, good employees, good baby sitters or good insurance risks. Zittrain also speculated that, over time, more and more reputation queries will be processed by a handful of de facto reputation brokers – like the existing consumer-reporting agencies Experian and Equifax, for example – which will provide ratings for people based on their sociability, trustworthiness and employability. -- In the Babylonian Talmud, people have an obligation not to remind others of their past misdeeds, on the assumption they may have atoned and grown spiritually from their mistakes.'

'An honest evaluation of who you can trust and who you can't is, in coming years, likely to be the most-important decision you will make, and you will make it time and time again. Being wrong over the last 20 years has cost you some money. Being wrong in the coming decade may throw you into rank destitution at best and cost you your life at worst. This is no laughing matter and there is no way around the facts.'

'Consider a young woman, Chloe, who has a close set of confidants – say 15 friends, both male and female – to whom she is extremely close. She also is part of a larger scene of 100 people or people that she sees frequently, but knows less well. And she may part of a even larger sphere ... Imagine if her geolocational information was propagated in correspondingly less detail as her Foursquare posts moved outward through these circles of trust. Her inner circle might see exactly where she is -- a certain corner of a certain bar -- and also might receive that information in real-time. Her 100 or so good friends might learn that she is in the Meatpacking district, or Nolita, but specifics would be blurred. So if one of that 100 had been invited to the same party they might be able to infer that Chloe was there, too. But they would have to directly ask her to get confirmation, and she could simply opt not to respond. And that information might be delayed by 15 minutes or 30 minutes, also.'

'Finally he talked about the values of trust. No trust and not knowing people prohibits charity to get to the needy. He explained that honour is in ten folds among the poor, so when the cash reaches the needy, they simply refuse if and because they don't trust you and don't want to risk their honour. The honour is the greatest wealth for them and for a matter of fact the only wealth. He then explained that this wealth is not to be undermined in any circumstance, cause many would lay down their lives to protect this honour. So when a stranger comes to help, often it is seen as a threat. Once the contact knows and accepts that the donor isn't trying to influence the poor for his/her gain, the donor can safely let this trust iterate through him/her to the poor person.'

'Seligman argues that there is a fundamental difference between *trust in people* (interpersonal relationships) and *confidence in institutions*. (The same would apply to technological systems, though this is not Seligman’s focus.) -- This goes to the heart of what trust actually is: a relationship that is not based upon reciprocal calculation, but is open-ended. Trust is therefore a very rare thing indeed. And because it is based on free will, trust cannot be demanded, only offered and accepted. -- Our relationships with state institutions are based upon confidence rather than trust: roles are ascribed while outcomes are intended and expected. There is neither unconditionality nor active engagement, but a passive relationship based on prescribed roles that are not subject to change or control. -- The defence of privacy as a political right needs to be re-established... Individuated conformity is not the basis upon which a robust defence of privacy can be mounted.'

'The reasons for witnesses’ reluctance appear to be changing and becoming more complex, with the police confronting a new cultural phenomenon: the spread of the gangland code of silence, or omerta, from organized crime to the population at large. Those who cooperate with the police are labeled “snitches” or “rats”—terms once applied only to jailhouse informants or criminals who turned state’s evidence, but now used for “civilian” witnesses as well. This is particularly true in the inner cities, where gangsta culture has been romanticized through rap music and other forms of entertainment, and where the motto “Stop snitching,” expounded in hip-hop lyrics and emblazoned on caps and T-shirts, has become a creed. The metastasis of this culture of silence in minority communities has been facilitated by a gradual breakdown of trust in the police and the government.'

'Four key conditions for the successful management of shared environmental resources: #information, #identity, #institutions and #incentives ...introducing a system of policing simply creates a second-order free-rider problem - raising the issue of who guards the guards. The key is trust - and the cornerstone for building trust is fairness. ...local water authorities tried to implement drastic water-saving measures... Residents were most likely to comply with authorities if they felt their concerns were taken seriously and they got accurate, unbiased information about the severity of the drought ...the more uncertain we are the more likely we are to bias our decisions in our own narrow self-interest ...the environmental uncertainty caused by a fluctuating resource led individuals to underestimate the damage of their actions and exploit the resource to the point of collapse.'

'With journalists being laid off in droves, ideologues have stepped forward to provide the “reporting” that feeds the 24-hour news cycle. The collapse of journalism means that the quest for information has been superseded by the quest for ammunition ... [the] goal is not to educate the public but to win. -- ...speaking wholly for himself, without fear or favor. This is what gives reporters the power to stir up trouble wherever they go. They can shake preconceptions and poke holes in presumption. They can celebrate the unnoticed and puncture the hyped. They can, as the old saying goes, afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. The honest, disinterested voice of a true journalist carries an authority that no self-branded liberal or conservative can have. Journalism, done right, is enormously powerful precisely because it does not seek power. It seeks truth. Those who forsake it to shill for a product or a candidate or a party or an ideology diminish their own power.'

On the 'central banking warfare model', systemic fraud/fraudulent inducement in America and beyond, disintermediation and trust networks -- "Financial fraud as government policy." -- "[Creditors] are buying our paper because we have the weapons." -- "The Red Button problem" (American citizens' complicity in continuing financial fraud to fund their entitlement benefits) -- "The value of the corporate brand is diminishing. The corporate brand has risen with significant amounts of fraud as its source of capital. (Corporates bought market share with leverage). There's a distrust on the corporate brand providing essential goods and services." -- "How could [the mortgage fraud] go on and me not know about it if I was the Assistant Secretary of Housing?? One of the hardest things to do is look into the mirror and say, 'So I'm the patsy here.'" -- "We're watching tremendous political control through dirty tricks (surpressing health and energy technology, etc)." -- "Green = No waste"

Emotional intelligence campaign for teens (ab)use of communication technologies. Great 'callout cards': "YOU MUST BE PROUD TO HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN IM ME ALL DAY" - "CONGRATS ON TOTALLY VIOLATING MY TRUST" -- 'Talk it out' section is full of interesting countermeasures. These poor kids are running constant damage limitation exercises. That's not cool.

'Your cell phone, IM, and social networks are all a digital extension of who you are. When someone you're with pressures you or disrespects you in those places, that's not cool. Thatsnotcool.com is attempting to raise awareness about digital dating abuse and stop it before it gets worse. Addressing new and complicated problems between people who are dating or hooking up, like constant and controlling texting, pressuring for nude pictures and breaking into someones e-mail or social networking page.' -- http://www.thatsnotcool.com

'“People care not only about outcomes, but about how outcomes came to be.” ...trust is a form of risk that makes one vulnerable to betrayal. “... risk-taking when the agent of uncertainty is nature is very different from when the agent is another person.” -- “People are less willing to take risks when confronted with another person than when confronted by nature.” -- “Trust is not only about willingness to take risks, but about the willingness to be betrayed.” -- "...if people are really betrayal averse, damages won’t satisfy them, because what they are concerned with is the *fact* of betrayal. U.S. contract law focuses on decreasing the material cost of betrayal, but what betrayal aversion asks for is to decrease the likelihood of betrayal, which causes emotional hurt.' In Islamic law ...damages play a much smaller role ...long-standing relationships [reduce] the likelihood of betrayal and thus, the social uncertainty involved in trust.”'

#Flow #Faces: Indeed, what you see are the faces of people you know with the notes they wrote next to them. This taps into deep mental structures that we all have to looks for faces and associate the information we receive with people we decide to trust, through what we feel about them. This is also why automated tweets not by them are so obtrusive, as they break the trust. Using friends' faces in ads is even more pernicious, as ads are by definition recommendations from people we don't trust. #Phatic #Following #Publics #Mutual media: Mutual media: The alternative model is one that is less familiar, yet is all around us - the spontaneous order that emerges from people communicating in parallel. ...we are each others media, we are the synapses in the global brain of the web of thought and conversation. #Small world networks'

'"You don't know me, but I know you..." Smokescreen is a cutting-edge game about life online. We all use Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and MSN to keep up with our mates - and we've all heard the stories about parties on Facebook being mobbed, or people getting stalked on MSN. The question is, what would you do if it happened to you? -- Smokescreen is a game about online identity, trust, and privacy. Launching in September, Smokescreen is from Channel 4 and Six to Start.'

"A comprehensive & innovative proposal for a new system of sustainable economics." -- This is the one.

'Individuals immersed in a productive scenius will blossom and produce their best work. When buoyed by scenius, you act like genius. Your like-minded peers, and the entire environment inspire you. ...scenius is nurtured by several factors: #Mutual appreciation: Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure. #Rapid exchange of tools and techniques: As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility. #Network effects of success: When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success. #Local tolerance for the novelties: The local "outside" does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. The renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.' -- Group flow

From the linked PDF 'Neither Hierarchy nor Network: An Argument for Heterarchy by Karen Stephenson': "There is no archeological precedent for heterarchy that we know of, largely because the world and our institutions have never been this interconnected. Heterarchy is a good idea, but very difficult to implement compared to more familiar forms of hierarchies and networks. Heterarchies can be seedbeds of contagion—of ineptness, of disease and of fraud as we have witnessed in the unintended consequences of ENRON, AIDS [etc]. Or, heterarchies can link together people and institutions to solve a complex task and/or achieve a grand design. Heterarchy could portend a premier form of 21st-century governance. Or it could be a harbinger of unimaginable perversity. -- Connection by technology without trust is merely traffic. Trusted connection without technology is an opportunity lost. To survive

'From dog-walking to rubbish clearance, civic-minded Estonians can now draw on a virtual Bank of Happiness which trades in good deeds. To become a client, an Estonian must register online, listing the useful things that he can do for others and those that he would like done unto him. “We call it a bank because we want to bring forth a new set of values”, says Tiina Urm, a 26-year-old who helped to think up the idea... “At the moment we are glued to other people only through money. But that’s not how we evolved as a society. We used to work as a team.” -- The helper also receives tangible evidence of his kindness: a “banknote” - printable from the bank’s website - offered by the grateful recipient in lieu of money, inscribed on the back with the date and nature of the deed. The note can then be passed on to another good Samaritan. And there is no system of equations to codify how one deed compares with another; the system will be self-regulatory.' -- Great thoughts on happiness.

"... once greed has been made an honorable motive, then you have an economy without limits. It has no place for temperance or thrift or the ecological law of return. It will do anything. It is monstrous by definition ... the commonly accepted basis of our economy is the supposed possibility of limitless growth, limitless wants, limitless wealth, limitless natural resources, limitless energy, and limitless debt. The idea of a limitless economy implies and requires a doctrine of general human limitlessness: all are entitled to pursue without limit whatever they conceive as desirable... this credo of limitlessness clearly implies a principled wish not only for limitless possessions but also for limitless knowledge, limitless science, limitless technology, and limitless progress. And, necessarily, it must lead to limitless violence, waste, war, and destruction. That it should finally produce a crowning cult of political limitlessness is only a matter of mad logic." -- Supersize We

"the banking system creates what they believe is money on their balance sheets, but the people that really matter (all of us) do not accept the 'money' on their balance sheets as 'money'. It is an entry in a book, and can not be used as a unit of exchange that is accepted by us all ...the reality is that, when push comes to shove, this does not constitute money, which is why banks hold reserves. However everyone might try to pretend that an IOU is money, the truth that it is not money is revealed when a depositor asks for their money back. The problem that we have here is made even greater by the fact that fiat money is of itself a form of money based upon nothing more than belief that it is money. However, it is the only medium of exchange that is universally accepted. The idea that IOUs on a bank balance sheet are money is occasionally tested, and whenever the test happens, it is found that it is NOT money. Once again, we can see this in the case of Northern Rock." -- Trust inscribed

"Virtual reputational economies show that reputation can be gained, lost, traded, protected, and shared, all in property-like fashion, without regard to whether it has independent economic value. In other words, reputation is not merely valuable; it is the new New Property. Having defined status as a kind of property, it is possible to further subdivide the virtual reputational economies: social networking platforms like Facebook and MySpace present one model; anonymous blogging and commentary another. In at least one important way, the former are more like online economies than they are like virtual world economies—the status they create and destroy exists both online and in the real-world reputational economy. Individuals use their real identities in these forums and often interact with people with whom they also have off-line relationships. Thus someone whose reputation is ruined in the online reputational economy likely loses it in the real world as well."

'The vigorous culture of guanxi tends to strongly intertwine game activities with real life activities. ...the art of doing guanxi resembles a kind of game play, a skilled activity that is marked as social, not work, amateur not professional, personal not official. ...guanxi [is] quite compatible with online gaming: a place in which to make social connections, feel human closeness, and maintain friendships over time, with a distinct feeling of being apart from the 'non-game' 'official' 'real life' world... Quality guanxi is often associated with a moral and ethical attitude, as well as mutual reliance on each other, which converts into face/status for both guanxi partners when exposed to others... Emotional aspects of the material and instrumental exchanges that come together in guanxi are not easily visible to outside observers, and the combination of instrumentlism and sentiment thus often appears contradictionary and leads to asociations with corruption and bribing.'

"It bears pointing out that most of us would prefer to remain blissfully unaware of any and all such arguments and notions, perhaps choosing to concern ourselves with topics less likely to depress our libido. Awareness of topics of global import is certainly not compulsory, and may not even be beneficial. Why worry about disasters we can do nothing to avert? Why not just enjoy our day in the sun, come what may? Also, large groups of people can be dangerous when panicked, and so I do not wish to panic them. As for the few of us who are concerned, my message to you is a cheerful one, because I believe that you can still exercise some measure of control over your destiny. So, if you want some help thinking things through with a positive attitude, read on." -- ...

'Fakesters were a way of “hacking” the system to introduce missing social texture. Although Fakesters had taken on a collective impression of resistance, their primary political stance concerned authenticity. In discussing Fakesters, Batty was quick to point out that there’s no such thing as an authentic performance on Friendster—“None of this is real.” Through the act of articulation and writing oneself into being, all participants are engaged in performance intended to be interpreted and convey particular impressions. While some people believed that “truth” could be perceived through photorealistic imagery and a list of tastes that reflected one’s collections, the Fakesters were invested in using more impressionistic strokes to paint their portraits. If we acknowledge that all profiles are performative, permitting users to give off a particular view of themselves, why should we judge Fakesters as more or less authentic than awkwardly performed profiles?'

"White lies are the spackle of civilization, tucked into the dirty corners and crevices our necessary, but pretentiously inflexible idealisms create. Small lies prop up and support our powerful truths, holding together the insanely half honest, half false chaos that spins the world. -- ... the third reason people lie, a truth saints and sinners have known for ages: we want to be seen as better than we see ourselves. Sadly, comically, we also believe we’re alone in both having this temptation, as well as the shame it brings with it (e.g. "We’re not alone in feeling alone"). The secret truth is everyone has moments of weakness: times when fear and greed melt our brains and we’re tempted to say the lies we wish were true. And for that reason the deepest honesty is found in people willing to admit to their lies, or their barely resisted temptations, and own the consequences. Not the pretense of the saints, who pretend, incomprehensibly, inhumanly, to never even have those urges at all."

"#Slide: Convergence is a cultural rather than a technological process. We now live in a world where every story, image, sound, idea, brand, and relationship will play itself out across all possible media platforms. The convergence is in our heads, not necessarily in tech devices. -- #Slide: "People don't engage with each other to engage viruses; people exchange viruses as an excuse to engage with each other." - Douglas Rushkoff -- #Slide: In a gift economy, status, prestige or esteem take the place of cash remuneration as the primary drivers of cultural production and social transaction. - Lewis Hyde"

"This year we have lived through something more than a financial crisis. We have witnessed the death of a planet. Call it Planet Finance. Two years ago, in 2006, the measured economic output of the entire world was worth around $48.6 trillion. The total market capitalization of the world’s stock markets was $50.6 trillion, 4 percent larger. The total value of domestic and international bonds was $67.9 trillion, 40 percent larger. Planet Finance was beginning to dwarf Planet Earth... On Planet Finance, the securities outnumbered the people; the transactions outnumbered the relationships."

'Why did this con work? Let's do some neuroscience. While the primary motivator from my perspective was greed, the pigeon drop cleverly engages THOMAS (The Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System). THOMAS is a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust we have been shown--even with strangers. The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of THOMAS, the human brain makes us feel good when we help others--this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. "I need your help" is a potent stimulus for action. Cons often work better when a confederate poses as an innocent bystander who "just wants to help." We are social creatures after all, and we often do what others think we should do.'

Tim Kendall: “That is advertising. But it doesn’t look like that to your friends, because they care about you.” -- Comment: cnawan: "There's a name for that - it's called a Man-in-the-middle attack" -- Hehe

"... if yesterday's price discovery is meaningless tomorrow, perhaps the real problem is that the institutions we've built aren't adequate for a hyperconnected world."

"Designers who want happy gamers should [make] their work conducive to appreciation...games [can] do wonderful jobs of appreciating themselves first, and drawing players in with that enthusiasm. It's great to play something that effuses self-celebration."

"The reason it is so hard for most technologists to see the power of services such as eBay and Etsy when they first come out is that we tend to look at the world through the prism of big companies and consumers."

Raph: Communities that stay only asynchronous stop existing after a while. That's just what happens.... Synchronicity is our default mode, it's how we're wired. Everything back to cave paintings is a workaround to the fact that we can't co-locate."

"In this new three-part series, leading theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku explores the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond."

'Web 3.0 throttles the "wisdom of the crowds" from turning into the "madness of the mobs" we've seen all to often, by balancing it with a respect of experts. Web 3.0 leaves behind the cowardly anonymous contributors and the selfish blackhat SEOs...'

"His theory is that if an employee shares a titbit of information, this makes the confidante feel important, that they are someone to be trusted."

"Ouch. You can dismiss whiny "pundits" all you want, but when major advertisers you touted as being charter members of the program decide you jerked them around, you had better start apologizing in a hurry." That would mean *now*, Zuckerboy.

"When someone goes to FaceBook, they're not looking for stuff. They're looking for people. But people don't buy ads, stuff does. That's a problem."

"its more designed to allow a brand to force entry into a closed network by co-opting one of the nodes. And all the evidence of the way social networks operate is that we tend to cut off rogue nodes once we identify them."

"VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the reciprocal of CRM or Customer Relationship Management. It provides customers with tools for engaging with vendors in ways that work for both parties."

#Ownership of their own personal information #Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and #Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites."

"Trusted Computing means that the computer will consistently behave in specific ways, and those behaviors will be enforced by hardware and software."

"You can fight back against this trend by only using software that respects your boundaries. Boycott companies that don't honestly serve their customers, that don't disclose their alliances, that treat users like marketing assets."

On Trusted Computing: “Treacherous computing” is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will disobey you. Some versions would require the operating system to be specifically authorized by a particular company"

Facebook funded by CIA (sort of)

Comment: "most of Facebook's pivot points are tied to affiliations and relationships that are based in the real world, they have a stronger bond than, say, "people who listen to the same music."

Do my medical records belong to me? To The State? To Google?

"I had no idea how involved they would get in the process," says Virgin's Kramer. "They're in it to share risk. They've become a business partner."

"Agencies have no incentive to produce amazing results, so they'll extend the project as long as possible because it's all billable hours. But Anomaly has an incentive to do great work. They have the same skin in the game that we do."

"To create truly compelling experiences, you need to have a hand in all the pieces of the puzzle." Hell yeah! Total design (as in Total football)

"YouTube and MySpace ... encourage your lame personal contributions. They do that because they've built their business models on the premise that you're a total loser in complete denial of the fact. That, and you have this incredible need to share."

On Facebooks challenge to Ebay and Craigslist: ..."when users can visualize the social connections between participants in a transaction, there's just a different type of trust there."

"AttentionTrust is a not-for-profit organization that puts the user in control of their Attention data. Until now, only companies on the other side of our clicking captured the value - Our Attention data has real value and needs to be protected."

Presentation by Aleks Krotoski

"a story titled “Geek’s Guide to Getting in Shape: 13 Surefire Tips” quickly tallied more than 100 del.icio.us links... Niall Kennedy outed the article as geek bait... the story was planted by a Web site loaded with advertising."