Starting a superstructure is only the beginning. The real task is envisioning what it can do, how it will work, and who you need to work with. If you're not a member, consider joining now. If you are a member, be bold, jump in, and use the superstructure to start organizing for survival. Edit it, add to the vision, and make it real, online and off. And don't forget to rave.

More about Superstructures

  • Trustnet

    trust, but verify
  • Founder: Antisocial Hermit

    trust, mmost, mmost hermit cooperation trust e, energeia, hermit,

  • Who We Need
    Everyone should join, the more the better. But what the project needs to work is obviously a philanthropic investment in the concept to make the tags and support maintenance of the Trustnet database. If possible, a business model to recoup the startup cost or turn a profit for the investors (without breaking the concept) is in order.
  • How to join

    New members of Trustnet will have their own uniquely coded tag, and will be given half a dozen other unique tags to hand out to other people. As these tags are activated, those members will be sent spare tags of their own.

    Ambitious members can attempt to be Trustnet "evangelists". Odds are that few politicians will be "trustworthy". A Trustnet member who personally accumulates thousands of positive ratings has a very good chance of getting votes from Trustnet members, and as long as they do not betray that trust, can use that support as legislative leverage, either from within, or from outside as a "trusted representative" of a given group.

  • Mission

    Trustnet is both a strategy and an organization, an attempt to implement some aspect of the Energeia idea. Anyone can join Trustnet. Members get a uniquely coded RFID reader/tag that is also wirelessly linked to an international database.

    Every time you do something with or for another Trustnet individual, you can link tags and choose to officially "trust them" (once per person). Or, in the event of a failure, "distrust them". Anyone coming into range of your tag can query it to see the amount and depth of trust in you (like how trustworthy are the people who trust you). "Trust" should be a generic measure, but it might be possible to have subcategories as well, like "I trust this person's professional qualifications", or "I trust this person to act in my best interest on environmental policy." Generic trust would be best, but there are certain practical applications to qualified categories.

    Over time, as people adopt the tags, you can have a verifable means of trusting strangers. If your car has broken down and someone pulls over to help, you'll know how trustworthy they are. The babysitter, the person you just started dating, that person of different ethnicity or religion you used to feel uncomfortable about, all become people you trust, because others trust them.

    And being able to trust strangers to do the right thing is good for you, and good for that group of people as a whole. It transcends race, religion, politics and possibly even language, and lets everyone recognize everyone else as individuals, not just "them".

  • What we can accomplish
  • How this superstruct works
  • Other information

    • Anti-griefing: To make it more difficult to casually grief people, I am envisioning that the trust/distrust process requires physical contact between tokens to initiate. So, at the start of a relationship you would touch tokens, and afterwards, you can rate the person. Querying a rating can be done remotely, however. Being able to see a depth of trust also helps to mitigate sabotage. If I see that you have been deemed untrusted by several people, and each of those people is themselves highly distrusted, I can figure that their rating is not worth as much. Perhaps the value of a person\'s opinion of you is tied to their overall trust level. The opinions of especially trustworthy people count for more?

      Revisions: A project this ambitious is unlikely to get it perfectly right the first time, so presumably there will have to be tweaks in the coding, ratings and so on. Since the basic hardware is merely a new use for existing devices that are already made in mass quantity (low-power wi-fi, RFID and public key encryption technology), minor adjustments can be done at the database end. It is necessary and desireable to have the trust database duplicated and distributed to minimize problems from hacking or government abuse, and probably to have current trust levels written into a small flash memory on the device in the event a person is temporarily out of range of the internet or if there is a temporary disruption of service. A public read-only database would also be useful, so that people without Trustnet tokens can look up information on people, just to see what Trustnet is about, and of course, this is an opportunity to get these people tokens of their own.

  • Discuss this superstructure

    • The United Registration Service would like to put up some capital to get this project off the ground.

      In the post-modern world, people have less and less trust in public officials and experts, listening instead to the opinions of friends and neighbours.  To counter this, the URS is interested in employing the TrustNet concept to restore public faith in the (newly unified and relaunched) Registration Service. 

      If you can provide our Registrars with TrustNet tags, we will promote the TrustNet system to every individual that we encounter (theoretically, this will be every single human being alive, given the scope of our work).  In addition, we will purchase TrustNet tags to present to new parents when they register a birth.  Parents are likely to be in the right social demographic to integrate the technology into their lives swiftly, plus - with a new child to care for - they have an vested interest in knowing who they can trust.  In this way, TrustNet should become a universally employed system within a very short space of time. 

      In order to get things moving, we will pay for the first 1000 tags for our staff, plus providing a loan to support technical development.  However, once the concept has taken off, we will expect to receive free tags for our new Registrars, a reduced rate for thetags supplied to the public, plus the return of our original investment.

      Interested?

      United Registration Service collaboration

      As the first real-world test for Trustnet, we are entering into an arrangment with the United Registration Service to supply Trustnet tags to their registrars and the people they deal with. This will be a good test of the basic concept. I would suggest that for maximum results, registrars should first get the support of key respected individuals in whatever region they are at, and be sure to highlight that the only information a tag has is who you are, and the only information it stores is how trustworthy other people think you are. Exchanging trust is always a consented to matter, so there is no invasion of privacy, no location tracking, etc.

      Trust farming

      One problem I can foresee is trust farming. It is potentially possible that an individual could contract out their token to someone who will do nothing but generate spurious trust links with people who have no real interaction with the token owner. There are both hardware and software solutions to this (biometrics, etc.), but if someone has their own ideas on how to minimize or eliminate that form of abuse, please chime in. No struct of this size can be managed by a single person. It will take many people to make it happen, and each can and should contribute their own ingenuity to it.

      Persistent identity: Distributed verification

      As trustnets grows in size and reputation, attempts to bend the system to personal gain will become inevitable. When the token is also the personal possession of the potential scammer, most security measures no matter how smart, including biometrics can be bypassed with clever programming and soldering, eventually. One key aspect is that the verification is not performed on the device owned by the person being verified. 

      Perhaps the whole exchange of information by RFID could be replaced by by a DNA sample given simply by holding or rubbing the each other's token.  

       Center for the Future of Museums collaboration

      Current studies show that museums have maintained their rating by the American public, first documented in 2002, as the most trusted public source of information. The Center for the Future of Museums would like to enter into an agreement with Trustnet to equip the 500 "avant museums" that volunteer to test new ideas with trustnet tags for their curators and educators. We would like to help validate these professionals as trusted sources of information. These staff can then spread the trust net by validating the expertise of knowledgeable amateurs, in effect providing a kind of informal credentialling. They can also provide useful feedback on the accuracy and trustworthyness of journalists (!) who interview them for coverage of arts, history, culture and science. This will help the public evaluate their news sources. Posted by Elizabeth Merritt

      Elizabeth, I think this would be a good application. As any subgroup develops a trust network amongst its members, it will gradually begin to interact with other such groups, naturally generating nodes of trust and individuals who have trust between different nodes, natural facilitators between the groups. - Hermit

      A futher proposition

      TrustNet is possibly the best and most widely-recognised system for overcoming the fragmented, fear-fuelled isolation of post-modern society.  Following the very successful collaboration between TrsutNet and the URS, I would like to invite TrustNet to expand its existing operation to support the implementation of Quantum Governance.

      The success of quantum society relies heavily on developing relational interdependence - a reality that can only be achieved if people's faith in each other can be restored and the gulf of paranoia overcome.  By working together with us, TrustNet will play an integrate part in the application of this key Quantum Manifesto policy.  Will you join us and help repair the fragile bridges that connect us all?

      Lord Samwise

      Most certainly! - Hermit

  • Related stories
  • Other superstructures we are collaborating with
Edit

IMPORTANT WRITING TIP! Our servers occasionally time out (usually after an hour)! So if you plan to spend more than a few minutes writing, why don't you prepare your text offline? When you're ready, refresh this page and then cut and paste your content here.

Nominate For A Badge

Badge:
More detail on badges

High Ping Quotient

HighPingQuotient

Longbroading

Longbroading

Open Authorship

OpenAuthorship

Cooperation Radar

CooperationRadar

Multi-Capitalism

MultiCapitalism

Mobbability

Mobbability

Protovation

Protovation

Influency

Influency

Signal/Noise Management

NoiseManagement

Emergensight

Emergensight



NOMINATE CANCEL