Las Preguntas para Miércoles

1. Rheingold mentions the development of “distributed reputation systems for ad-hoc wearable computer communities.” How do you feel about this prospect? Think about it in terms of RFID tags as discussed in Monday’s class: what do you think of the possibility that anyone with a cellphone or PDA might one day be able to pull up your “reputation” score on the spot by interfacing with an RFID tag stored in your personal device or credit card? How would this effect social interaction in general?

2. The chapter points out the emergence of systems where reputation serves as a social reward in itself, perhaps granting the user esteem, personal gratification, or making it easier to interface with other people in the community. Do you think that people would participate in a system that did not feature a reputation system of some sort, where there was no way for them to enjoy any personal effects? For example, do you think a community where every user listed as anonymous would survive?

3. In a similar vein, do you think it would be at all possible to have a commercial community that functioned and grew without an underlying reputation system? That is to say, could websites like eBay exist if there was no way to check a seller’s reputation? Rheingold says no, but what do you personally think? Can you think of an example?

4. When someone has an opinion of someone else in the “real world,” we can easily evaluate that opinion based on what we know of the beholder – i.e. if Bob says that Jack is a liar and a horse-thief, we might brush it off, since we might also know that Bob himself is a convicted felon and notorious liar. Similarly, Bob might never make such a statement to begin with, knowing full well that Jack is a trained cage-fighter and would kick him in the face. Online communities, however, have the added attribute of anonymity. Bob could create a new user account, slander Jack, and then disappear, either creating a new account or leaving the site in general. Thus, Jack’s reputation is harmed, while Bob skips off without fear of retribution. Based on this example and on human ficklness in general, can one really trust an online reputation system? Similarly, how can new users starting with no reputation gain trust to begin with?