Why Trust Matters

I have had several different trains of thought in mind for a while, but tonight something very interesting happened, while I happened to be sprucing up my nascent Parfumo account.  These thoughts converged in a tangible way.  Because I happen to be on Parfumo, that is where these thoughts will end up.

I am delighted to see that Parfumo keeps a very tidy and timely database of fragrances.  I was even happier to see that users can submit pictures easily.  I have even heard rumors, shall we say, that more such things are in the works, making it easy for Parfumo users to submit even more information about fragrances.

There are other databases that are not doing this, and I'll be blunt.  They are going to be in trouble - if they are not already.  But they are not alone in this.  Throughout the IT world, there are retrograde movements here and there, that are clamping down and exerting control in all the wrong places.  Sometimes control is good, when it makes things easier and freer for people in the long run.  But control without certain and well-considered purpose tends to be nothing more than a friction of information, bogging down the machine.

Why is this important?  It's simple "Wikinomics".  By that, I am using the title of the book by Don Stapscott and Anthony D. Williams.  I could bore you with excerpts, but I don't need to, because of one of my other trains of thought - the one about trust.  All I need to tell you is the subtitle of that book:  "How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything".  The important point is not the simple fact that mass collaboration DOES change everything.  It is the fact that mass collaboration MUST change everything.  And one of the ways that mass collaboration works is through trust.  It needs trust to work ever more efficiently, and therefore the intelligent mass will squeeze out, route around, and make inert what can't be trusted, or what won't give trust when it can and should.

Gone are the days of index cards, handed out in stacks to special people, to fill out to build the library.  Gone are mere dumb terminals, where they could enter data on what are little better than virtual cards.  The universal computer - an idea so brilliant that it is not even the invention of its discoverer, Turing, but rather something buried in the mathematics of the universe, is what we now give to people.  Why?  Because we must teach men to fish with better and better equipment, rather than merely giving them fish.  Trusting a few monks with pens to hand out the holy data to the people is old school.  Algorithms - tools - apps - given to the people so that they can return a bounty of fish to the new data monks - that's where it's at.  We unify and standardize on the surface, but underneath we give people POWER and TRUST to accomplish even more than we could have before.

And it applies here.  Fragrance is growing exponentially.  Don't expect to keep up with a data explosion - powered by the internet - without the same kind of power in response.  The public is creating fragrance, more and more.  They are needed to help keep up with it.

Are there dangers?  Yes, there are dangers.  When we teach men to fish, there is a danger that they may poach fish.  That they may steal fish.  That they may give rotten fish to others, or even catch old tires and call them fish!  But we have to TRUST - not only in the individual who has not yet proven untrustworthy - but also in our ability to police things - not merely at the data level, but far better at the algorithm level - the user level.  Translation?  Curate users - not data.  Treat trusted users as the autonomous data miners that they are.  Use them, and let them be the change you need.  Trust them like A.I., and let them be part of your solution.

Build your solution to let the user be the black box - the part that A.I. isn't doing yet - but build your solution to incorporate that black box as part of the machine.  To trust it - perhaps somewhat interchangably - but trusted nevertheless.  Don't trust blindly - build with the idea that systematic errors DO occur - that they MUST occur - but that if you have planned for them, they are easily corrected.  And corrected "en masse" - just as they were made.

Fragrance is beautiful because fragrance is a metaphor for everything - because it is almost metaphor itself, without words.  One thing it teaches us, is that we should trust another's creation, which we take in deeply.  Let that then be a metaphor for even greater trust, between those who share in the enjoyment of the fragrance.