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I'm actually really interested in the idea of social networks becoming part of physical life and reducing our disconnectedness. When we lived in villages, every

I'm actually really interested in the idea of social networks becoming part of physical life and reducing our disconnectedness. When we lived in villages, everyone knew everyone. In a city, nobody knows who you are. But with a physical social network in the picture, suddenly the city is looking like the village again. Everyone knowing everyone has advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, out-group behaviour can be more easily identified and punished. This is useful for reducing out-group behaviour you disapprove of, e.g. crime, but bad because it discourages out-group behaviour you approve of, e.g. radical political opinions. One example: I would love to be able to give karma scores to other drivers, and I bet insurance companies would be interested too.

Hyena 15y ago
Nothing about this requires a real name. Almost no one on the Internet knows my real name and yet plenty of people know me very well.
itg 15y ago
"One example: I would love to be able to give karma scores to other drivers, and I bet insurance companies would be interested too." I wouldn't. This can easily be easily gamed just the way social media sites tend to be gamed.
patio11 15y ago
Insurance companies already do this with FICO scores, which are scandalously good predictors of risk for just about anything. (Pick your favorite explanation: they correlate with irresponsibility and that correlates with bad outcomes, or they correlate with poverty and bad things happen to poor people.) Someone is eventually going to take the old "You are the average of your five best friends" adage and create a score (a set of scores, more likely) based on it. That will either be illegalized within a year or make billions. (My cynical rationale on it getting political heat is that it will be probably better than human judgment, like FICO, hit some people hard, like FICO, and strike people as "unearned", unlike the layman's understanding that FICO scores are dominated by your behavior as opposed to the behavior of other people.)

Hyena 15y ago

Nothing about this requires a real name. Almost no one on the Internet knows my real name and yet plenty of people know me very well.

itg 15y ago

"One example: I would love to be able to give karma scores to other drivers, and I bet insurance companies would be interested too." I wouldn't. This can easily be easily gamed just the way social media sites tend to be gamed.

patio11 15y ago

Insurance companies already do this with FICO scores, which are scandalously good predictors of risk for just about anything. (Pick your favorite explanation: they correlate with irresponsibility and that correlates with bad outcomes, or they correlate with poverty and bad things happen to poor people.) Someone is eventually going to take the old "You are the average of your five best friends" adage and create a score (a set of scores, more likely) based on it. That will either be illegalized within a year or make billions. (My cynical rationale on it getting political heat is that it will be probably better than human judgment, like FICO, hit some people hard, like FICO, and strike people as "unearned", unlike the layman's understanding that FICO scores are dominated by your behavior as opposed to the behavior of other people.)