Our mission is to create, on the Internet, a trusted and trusting community. Many may question the feasibility of this mission, but we are going to try it anyway!
Definition. Let us define trust for the purpose of our discussion. Trust as "believing that others tell the truth and keep their promises." Trust can be risky if our belief is wrong; if trusted persons do not tell the truth and do not meet their promises. We exclude from the definition "gullibility"-- unreasonable trusting and "faith"-- believing unconditionally, usually as a matter of religion.
Importance. Trust is important. Advanced economies, and in fact, each of us cannot survive without relying on others, to a greater or lesser extent.
Costs and benefits. Trust can be efficient when the cost of verifying other people's statements and reliability of their promises is higher than the benefit from the relationship. Thus, the cost of verifying the honesty of a money manager that controls my life's savings may be higher than the benefit I can derive from his expertise. In such a case I would engage this money manager only if I trusted him. Trust is even more efficient when the cost of my money manager in convincing me of his trustworthiness is higher than the amount that he would receive for his services. In this situation the gap between us would be too great, and we will interact only on the basis of trust. The use of cell phones, television, and the Internet has introduced a habit of trusting 'virtual people.'
Mobility and quick interactions among people blur the difference between friends and casual acquaintances. In the networking mentality of business circles, people often confuse exchanging business cards with time-tested relationships... People often assume that sharing the same occupation means sharing the same level of trustworthiness. These assumptions can be wrong. But it is too costly to check every person that one meets in conferences and business engagements.1
Trust facilitators. There are many private sector facilitators of trusting relationships. They verify and guarantee particular facts or actions of other people or organizations or situations. These facilitators include lawyers, accountants, advisers, commercial and investment bankers, rating agencies, and credit-card issuers.
There are organizations that check out and guarantee their own members' trustworthiness, such as physicians, lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, and broker dealers. Some organizations are themselves regulated by government agencies (e.g., the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers, and the American bar Association). Banks and insurance companies are not as organized presumably because they are strictly regulated and trust in them is very strong.
Internet "verifiers" such as Verisign and eTrust establish trust. Reputation, which can establish trust, may arise by networking, publicity through independent sources (e.g., newspapers) rating by customers (e.g., eBay and public polls) and inquiries of friends and acquaintances. A trust-creating program is LinkedIn, where users guarantee specific persons for whom they vouch to people who do not know them. The law is a weaker guarantor of trustworthiness in the virtual world that in the real world.
The question: what other mechanisms can be established to create a trusting and trusted community in the virtual world?
Re: Contest Discussion: Trust Communities
In today's rapidly globalizing information economy, “trust”—both as a conceptual standard and in all its practical applications—will be an absolute prerequisite to the establishment of effective and secure Web-based interoperability between attorney and client.
Ever since the first time an advocate hung out his shingle, the attorney-client trust relationship has been fundamental to the success of the legal profession. Internet-based legal advocacy not only magnifies the need to develop and nurture these unique trust relationships, it also opens up wholly alien territories in trust-building that must be explored and tamed if the profession is ever to make a full transition to the new information economy. Our failure to do as a profession means we risk becoming marginalized and irrelevant, as new forms of technology-enabled advocacy will certainly fill the gaps where we have failed to do so.
So, what does the legal profession need to do? First, we have to actually decide whether or not we are willing to commit ourselves and our profession to the new global economy. That means putting a whole host of outdated pre-Internet rules out to pasture, and replacing them with a global set of professional standards that recognize and embrace the real world faced by our profession in the 21st century.
In my opinion, new global economy attorney-client trust relationships will take root and flourish only after we successfully establish several separate yet inter-related “spheres” of individual and professional governance. These spheres of governance must address the issue of trust in the Internet Age at every point along the professional continuum: From the micro-level, where interaction occurs between the individual lawyer and her client (and who may never actually meet a single time in the corporeal form), up through the macro-level, where 21st century technology requires us to adapt to a world where changes in information, culture, clients evolve in terms of milliseconds instead of decades.
In my opinion, the spheres of trust development and maintenance all belong to a meta-framework that can be thought of as Universal Rules for Internet-Age Lawyering, but they can be sorted among three main branches:
Technology and Infrastructure
Governance, Regulation and Enforcement
Access and Education
I’d like to address what I mean by each category, and what I see as the components of each, in future posts in this thread. Hopefully, other people will find my ideas interesting and will point out what they agree with, what they don’t and what they would do differently.
A little about me: I’ve been practicing law for a little over ten years in both the public and private sectors. I currently live in a small rural town in Western Massachusetts, USA, which in many respects I consider to be the front line in the push to adapt a 21st century law practice to life in the Internet Age.
Cheers to all.
Re: Contest Discussion: Trust Communities
Hi,
Here we are aiming to create a new trusted online culture and, I think, as jmconway says, the willingness to commit to such culture is a foundamental factor. I think a group can only start by aiming the same goal and objective and in order to creat in-group sense, the group needs commitment from each member.
Unlike face to face (F2F) communication, online communication is not reliable or hard to be trusted sometimes because of the muliple and anonymous identities of parties involved. Jeffrey Aresty's paper on "Digital Identity and the Lawyer's Role in Furthering Trusted Online Communities" discusses the secure digital indentites (DIDs) and they will surely help us manage the multiple ids of parties. But as Prof. Frankel's Hutton's case demonstrates, the slope is very slippery even if a party has single identity and committed to F2F communication.
If we can create a trusted community in which members share their experiences, nurture their followers, and benefit by being honest and trustful, then the out group members may show interest of joining the community. One of the important factors of online community is that it involves people from different countries, cultures, ethnicity, and traditions as long as they have access to the internet. On one hand, there is a great potential for this type of community to grow quickly, on the other hand, the community will have danger of facing various types of threats.
One way to start such community is to establish universal codes of ethics and standards of practices of thie community. I am not saying that people have tendency to become bad faithed if they are not restricted by standards and rules. I think the online community is worldwide and every nation has cultural and traditional differences which need to be addressed. I have seen a case when an organization was created in the US naming themselves "international association" and invited members from different partsw of the world. Their codes of ethics and standards of practices, however, were only based upon American standards. Some members from different countries traditionally and culturally practiced differently. Thus these people could not acquire full memberships. There were frustrations among members because they called themselves "international".
Without knowing what people of the community do or aim to do, it would be hard to govern and educate. What is a universally trusted community and how can we maintain such trust and honesty worldwide?
Re: Contest Discussion: Trust Communities
Quick question:
Why do you consider your small rural town the front line of 21C law practice? (I'm sure I will agree with you on most accounts; I'm just curious as to your reasoning)
Best,
mdthorne
Front Lines
Dear mdthorne:
My apologies for the delay in this response...Living in a relatively rural area, three hours from Boston, MA (the closest big city), it sometimes can feel as if the legal profession here is still operating with only late 20th century tools: Fax, word processor, rudimenary email (that some local attorneys still refuse to accept as valid forms of communication) and telephone.
There are, however, a growing number of attorneys operating solo or in small firms that are using any and all of the newest technologies and business practices to make themselves as relevant and as up-to-date as the biggest, most technologically progressive law firms and corporate legal departments. such as:
domestic and overseas outsourcing of document review and paper management;
groupware for case management
hardware such as blade servers for more efficient and cost-sensitive use of computing resources; and
use progressive lawyering techniques such as arbitration/mediation in place of traditional adversarial litigation (for example, in a domestic relations or divorce case.
Re: Contest Question and Latest Posts
Hello group!
My name is Katherine Hartung, and I am in the midst of second year law school exams.
What drew me to this topic? I am interested in Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and at twenty-five am a member of the dot-com generation. I am eager to hear your ideas on incorporating the world of law into the recent technology explosion.
As a young teen, I joined the then growing internet community. In the beginning, threats of internet predators and identity thieves were not yet imagined. As time went by, however, the dark-side of the internet began to surface.
Twelve years later, I fear giving out any personal information. In fact, I was hesitant to give my email address to this forum until I verified its academic merit. I don’t tell anyone where I live. I don’t send out pictures. I do research before shopping online. I look at every internet business with a skeptical eye. The trust is gone.
What is the root of this evil? We may begin our analysis with a discussion of ethics. Not only the ethical problems such as those presented by the E.F. Hutton case, but also the ethical dilemmas faced by a new generation of lawyers and lawmakers attempting to rein in the unreliability of this faceless forum. We must create an atmosphere of trust to create a stable online economy for business to flourish.
Addressing problems raised by mogino, a good starting place is adding a face to the facelessness. I believe the future of internet communication lies in ADR. How can we facilitate communication without facilitators? Additionally, mediation is the most time and cost efficient means of dispute resolution, and arbitration is much more workable in an internet community than the already clogged court system.
In order to develop a new system of regulation, we must first establish a system of rules. As jmconway points out, a rule scheme that governs all the internet is a good starting place. A problem in creating laws for the internet is enforcement. Who has jurisdiction? I suggest making many of the transactions contractual with provisions for arbitration.
I would love to hear your thoughts. To be honest, I feel rather presumptuous proposing such drastic ideas to the legal community without a law degree, but I hope to learn as much as possible through this process!
Re: Contest Question and Latest Posts
as the Internet Bar is going to organize the conference, about Internet Mediation, I think it is better to take part to enhance the knowlege to teach the world community how to resolve the conflict/dispute by means of Internet Mediation.
If I get the chance, I suppose to take part in Hong Kong Internet Mediaton Conference.
Thanking You
Mr. Govinda Luitel
Pathari Morang
Nepal
Re: Contest Question and Latest Posts
I am a sensory person and my trust is generally based on my intuition, personal experience, and interaction with others. I am not a person who uses the internet to socialize. Although recently I joined a firm where I am not in constant face-to-face contact with my associates on a daily basis. So the internet and e-correspondence are a major form of my interaction with clients and people I am working with on long term projects. Honesty and trust are built over time-- communicating and building relations and understanding build trust for me. I expect that having some common "rules of engagement" (ground rules) that people agree and commit to respect will build trust. Defining terms so that the exisiting diversity and various cultures allow us to communicate from a place of accepting and honoring our differences. We can gain much from working together with many divergent perspectives. I honor and believe that differences add value to public conversations. The insights gained from various viewpoints frequently offers all involved a new perspective.
So I look forward to learning more from a diverse community and trusting the process.
I am a "reformed lawyer" who left the practice of law after 12 years and for the past 14 have been a mediator/facilitator involved in using dispute resolution skills to help people learn about themselves and others. I am presently involved in mediating and facilitating environmental and health issues, as well as community and interpersonal matters.
My committment and passion is working with people and learning more about myself.
Welcome from Jeff Aresty, president, Internetbar.org
At the recently concluded Fifth International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution, the following opening address was delivered for Daewon Choi. Mr. Choi, along with Professor Ethan Katsh of the University of Massachusetts, conceived the idea to start these forums several years ago, which now draw representatives from more than 30 countries around the world. He points out the importance of building trust in online communities engaged in e-commerce and justice. The mission of Internetbar.org is to build trusted online communities to support economic justice as well as all forms of fair online justice.
Fifth International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution
Opening Address
by Daewon Choi
Chief, ICTP, UNESCAP
19 April 2007
Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the Fifth Annual Forum on Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), hosted by the University of Liverpool in collaboration with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).
As you know, ODR is an important area as it is becoming a priority for governments eager to promote e-commerce and technological development. ODR serves to build trust in online and cross-border commercial activities through the smooth resolution of disputes that could arise from these activities: ODR is reducing the friction cost associated with electronic commerce and encouraging its growth.
ODR can contribute to a more open and non-discriminatory trading system – the key targets of the Millennium Development Goals approved by the United Nations General Assembly.
Yet, beyond providing viable solutions to the outstanding legal issues linked to the increased use of the Internet for business, I envision a novel and deeper role emerging for ODR as an agent of change to stimulate and accelerate structural and judiciary reforms in developing countries.
This would enable their legal systems stay up to date with the advancement in technology so that they could fully benefit from the Information Society.
Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Paragraph 13 of the Geneva Plan of Action of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) encourages "the ongoing work in the area of effective dispute settlement systems, notably Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), which can promote settlement of disputes."
And the WSIS went further, as Paragraph 36 of the Tunis Commitment states that the Members States "value the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to promote peace and to prevent conflict which, inter alia, negatively affects achieving development goals.’
We can thus consider ODR as a tool not just for economic dispute resolutions, but as a tool for peace, health and social development.
Government ICT policies will therefore need to have ODR not only to advance the Internet economy, but more generally to serve as a tool to combat and bridge the justice divide through e-justice.
The challenge now is to shape these new capabilities so that they can work in harmony with, and not in opposition to, the social processes at work in the physical world.
Governments also have a role in helping the development of norms and standards for ODR. This translates into reasoning at the outset that the United Nations has an important role to play in shaping the development of global ODR.
It will be a catalyst for the effective implementation of ODR around the world, as one of the tools to achieve the internationally agreed development goals including the objectives of the. Millennium Declaration
Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today’s meeting in Liverpool has a particular significance for the global ODR community. Indeed, our ODR Forum has completed a same journey of Vasco Da Gama, travelling half way the globe. The journey started in Geneva, proceeded to Melbourne, anchored in Cairo, and now culminates in our meeting here in Liverpool which celebrates its 800 years of foundation.
In December this year, the next ODR Forum will be held Hong Kong. It is particularly timely as ODR is already playing an important and increasing role in Asia and the Pacific. The region is home to more than 60 per cent of the world's population, and its e-commerce and online activities are growing fast.
In the Asia and Pacific region, ODR also has an enhanced role as an empowerment tool for rural and poor people who have little access to dispute resolution by other means.
In return, the rest of the world will benefit, as the next generation of online dispute resolution systems emerge from Asia and the Pacific, that will reflect cultural diversity of the region, its unique socio-political textures, and the specificity of its ICT, more mobile phone oriented than PC oriented. Thus, the Hong Kong meeting will learn and benefit a lot from this Liverpool meeting.
Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am confident that this Forum will be a tremendous success and significantly contribute to the advancement of ODR through discussions on current challenges, best practices and technological innovations.
UNESCAP stands ready to support the Forum in its goal to develop ODR systems which can contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and the vision of the World Summit on the Information Society.
Finally, my special thanks go to the organizers of this meeting who have committed and dedicated themselves for this new journey. While Vasco was travelling with lex mercadoria some five hundred years ago, we are navigating with lex ODRia. On this chartered journey, we may be scripting a new chapter in cyberspace.
Thank you.
Re: Contest Question and Latest Posts
Hello everyone,
I have a question to ask.
We can trust someone who keeps his or her words and all the forms in trades are based upon this. The credit history, credit record, feedbacks, trust seals, the recommendations from BBB, etc. But people will change. You never know.
But as as the greenpeacemaker says below, there is a side of intuition and chemistry to trust somebody. First, we need to communicate with the other side, and through the communication process, our intuition tells us whether trust or not to trust. Thus many websites have FAQ, mission statements, etc. This is an ongoing process and based on present interaction. But our intuition may be wrong.
Can we think of any other mechanisms beside these?
Creating Trust on line and across borders
First of all-- I use the handle "Greenpeacemaker" and I have no need to hide my identity-- I am Don Greenstein
I believe that one begins to trust others by taking risks. And yes, I agree that sometimes our intuitions and the risks we take are not what we think and we are "wounded" or we lose faith in a process. I believe that those of us who are willing should put out what we need and desire to begin building a trusted on line community and I believe that we can create one over time.
I'd like to know that those on line in this community are willing to respect differences and even though we can choose to agree to disagree we will listen/read and consider the information shared and agree to ask questions to gain understanding and not misuse the material shared in this community. Is this something that all engaged in this process would consider agreeing to?
What other ideas/principles do each of you want so that we can all agree or at least know where our differences exist at this juncture? i.e., What other "principles of enagement" do others want to begin the trustbuilding process?
Looking forward to getting to know others and learning about this process of trustbuilding on line.
Don
Hi Don, I agree that
Hi Don,
I agree that constructive controversy is a good way to start. I may need to start taking notes on everyone's ideas... Thank you for your feedback.
Madoka
Contest Discussion: Trust Communities
I agree that building trusted online communities is where technology is heading, but I feel that such a community would necessarily require defined terms and ground rules to avoid any misunderstandings that may naturally flow from a community of typed words. I feel trust comes from a gut feeling. When you are communicating with someone face to face, naturally you will take in cues, sometimes subconsciously, such as whether they are looking you in the eye, whether they are fidgeting, what tone they are using, etc. These cues allow you to determine from your gut whether you trust someone or not. There can be a big communication barrier when you don't have that face to face connection. Some people may get confused with certain phrases, others may not be able to express themselves as clearly and pointedly as they would in person, and still others may manipulate the forum and take advantage of others.
In sum, I think a trusted online community is possible and at its best with ground rules and defined terms, but I think that the in-person touch that is missing will be missed.
Maybe there would be a way to communicate via video as well, on occasion, videoconferencing options, maybe using a program like Skype?
Mechanisms that Establish / Create / Develop Trust
My research suggests that there are only three types of mechanisms that contribute to establishing (creating or developing) trust. They facilitate access to: extrinsic (subjective or authoritative - analogous to an expert witness) sources of trust for attaining "fast trust"; intrinsic (objective or experiential - analogous to an eye witness) sources of trust; and tools that empower relying parties (trustors) with freedom to identify and choose preferred sources of trust and take preferred action.
For an example of the kinds of mechanisms that fall into each of these categories see slides from a presentation I recently delivered to a legal industry audience at http://trustenablement.com/local/Building_Trust_in_a_Law_Firm.pdf.
For mechanisms that help to establish trust online, see a presentation I delivered at the McMaster University World Congress a couple of years ago at http://trustenablement.com/local/The_Challenges_of_Online_Trust-slides.p....
Since the question only asks about mechanisms that address half of the trust equation, namely those that establish trust, I won't use this posting talk about those that ensure (protect from a loss of deficiency of) trust.
However, I should comment on the role of a community in the trust equation. Although a community can help to establish trust between members, it's archetypal role is to "ensure" trust, as it is a motivator, the first of three types of mechanisms that protect from a loss or deficiency of trust (BTW, the other two are ability {or capability or proficiency} and risk transfer).
Finally, I would add that dispute resolution mechanisms also contribute more to "ensuring" trust than to "establishing" trust.
The Myth of Reality ;-)
Different cultures (let alone individuals) perceive behaviors differently so we have a hurdle to get past (or rather a very volatile substance to work with in addressing the question of this discussion) in terms of contrasting perceptions of what trustworthy behaviors are. In one culture it might instil trust for someone to be authoritative in manner, directing the conversation or dialogue online, laying down the law in terms of fixed ground rules and being very articulate using words that show learning and academic background. However, someone from another culture may perceive these very same behaviors as indicative of arrogance or threat and untrustworthiness. How does one work with/be sensitive to the multitude perceptions of reality out there in the ether/virtual world when working online with the written word only? At a bare minimum I guess it is imperative to be true to one’s word as it is all one has to shape not only our individual realities but those of the online community. I.e. be careful not to contradict one’s self; if one says one will do something, then do it. I think someone mentioned the idea of taking risks or making one’s self vulnerable. It seems to me that as a member of an online community I would model my behavior on that of others and would definitely feel a greater sense of trust if I saw signs of humility in the group’s culture. I would be more willing to share my own thoughts without strategizing about what I was going to say if I observed others taking that same risk. Giving participants of online communities the ability to Instant Message or Live Chat sessions is a good idea to encourage/enable more spontaneous flow of conversation so that there isn’t the sense that all participants are conniving, plotting, strategizing in between posts. LOL…I’m sounding paranoid, but hopefully this is a valuable point.
Greenpeacemaker invited this emerging community to make an agreement with eachother. That we are willing to respect differences. Made me think that the ability to attach buttons to posts online like in Outlook would be useful, i.e. Yes/No; Approve/Reject; Sign Me Up/ Are you kidding?…The other part of the proposed agreement was to agree to ask questions to gain understanding and not misuse the material shared in this community. My gut response to this request was are you assuming I don’t respect differences? do you not trust that I will ask questions? do you expect me not to understand? and are you anticipating me and others misusing material shared? Which surely was not the intention of your request, but just thought I’d mention it on the topic of words and how they influence trust or an individual’s perception of trust. The complexity of multiple realities created by individual’s perceptions is overwhelming. It means that each word is a powerful trigger for a multitude of reactions.
One other thought in terms of varying cultures. One of Hofstede’s dimensions of culture is uncertainty avoidance. “Cultures that scored high in uncertainty avoidance prefer rules (e.g. about religion and food) and structured circumstances”. (www.wikipedia.org :-)) So we might want to reconsider idea of setting ground rules and defining terms when those involved in the online virtual world are from cultures that are low in uncertainty avoidance. As the strict rule-setting could have the opposite impact in terms of establishing trust.
Mogino, I’m still thinking on your question, “What is a universally trusted community and how can we maintain such trust and honesty worldwide?”. It would be great if we could come up with a universally trusted community and take a look at how and why it is the way it is.
Reply to Shunter
Shunter stated: "The other part of the proposed agreement was to agree to ask questions to gain understanding and not misuse the material shared in this community. My gut response to this request was are you assuming I don’t respect differences? do you not trust that I will ask questions? do you expect me not to understand? and are you anticipating me and others misusing material shared? ... "
This is a wonderful exampe which reflects how our own cultures, values, and perceptions can be read into peoples words, and (in my judgment) we each make our own assumptions about what a persons words are saying (about the writer) which reflect our life experience and not the writers. You are 100% accurate when you continued by stating:
"Which surely was not the intention of your request, but just thought I’d mention it on the topic of words and how they influence trust or an individual’s perception of trust. The complexity of multiple realities created by individual’s perceptions is overwhelming. It means that each word is a powerful trigger for a multitude of reactions."
and I believe as Shunter has so aptly stated that intention is not always clearly stated. I believe even when we interact face-to-face words only account for a small amount of the communication that is occuring. And when we communicate by writing we lose the use of our other sensory modes of communication and the written word becomes the sole influence on our interaction. This limits the ability to trust the writer with whom we have limited contact. Over time, I believe trust can be built especially as we interact more freely and for a period of extended time.
Possibly having some on line "game" interaction or a discussion on a scenario, (informal and not value or judgment driven) that allows us all to share a little and get to know each other might help "break the ice!"
And I continue to learn from this engagement!
Please share this discussion with others who you know may want to consider participating! The more people we can engage now in this "experiment"the more opportunity we will have to see if we can create a trusted on line experience! Let's grow this opportunity so we all may benefit from the learning.
I look forward to hearing, reading and seeing more discussion on line.
Don
Shunter & Online Trust
Shunter, these are valuable points that you raise and they go to the very heart of what I believe to be our greatest challenge.
In my long post on Integral Theory I tried to create a context for some of the challenges you speak of in your post. And, in thinking of Mogino's call for defining exactly what a global trusted online community would be, I'll offer a few additional comments based on what you've written.
The current objective reality we have is the capability for building global online trusted communities--the technology exists and gets better all the time; but this is juxtaposed against a global population living in several different worlds, or world views, based on different levels of consciousness/awareness/ability to take perspectives.
If we envision a global online group and we wish to engender trust, we have to begin by understanding that some participants in this group will have extremely narrow world views, some will have relatively normative world views and some will have advanced or even enlightened world views. This holds true everywhere in human endeavor and one fact confirmed in study after study is that technology itself DOES NOT in and of itself increase any particular person's consciousness.
In other words, while it is laudable at one level to want to provide a laptop computer to every child in the world (though adequate food, shelter and economic opportunity would in my opinion be more valuable) we cannot assume that by connecting the world we are advancing the values of the world. This is easy to spot empirically: highly ethnocentric and mythic level people have access and have the cognitive ability to use advanced weapons for highly destructive purposes and of course have the ability to use the Internet to enhance their communication.
So the fact is that any global trusted community has to be globally inclusive--everyone has to be able to potentially participate; but it also has to be governed by the highest order of cognitive awareness--e.g. rules, policy and governance. Otherwise, we'll end up with the "wild west" conditions that several posts have discussed. So, how do we create the community Mogino envisions, within the constrictions based on cognitive ability and cultural differences that Shunter speaks of, but also taking into account the vast differences in world views that Integral Theory shows us?
To me, we have to begin by at least acknowledging these differences--this is basic plurasim: we're different and we need to get along somehow. But pure pluralism has a problem--it doesn't recognize or make distinctions in relative values. When a pluralist (or one might want to use the academic term "post-modernist") bumps up against widely different world views or values systems, he or she generally refuses to make a distinction--because the very making of such distinctions "seems" to contradict the pluralist's internal value system.
Therefore, my strong belief is that we have to go beyond merely acknowledging our differences; we must make value-judgments between different world views. If we do not do this, we end up with a "mish-mosh" of pluralistic contradictions. To me this is more apparent when we try to "balance" needs that, in my opinion are simply not equal and thus do not need balancing, but rather need to be stratified. For example, is the desire for freedom and autonomy equal in a universal sense to the desire for one group to have its particular fears and ignorance accorded equal value? My view is no. However, I can acknowledge that group's fear as legitimate in a relative sense, without according their view as equally legitimate. I can be open to where this particular view could be respected in a relative sense--in specific contexts. I can grant this viewpoint "some" relevance, without according it "equal" relevance.
These are difficult issues. We need to explore how to develop a global group that reflects the highest order of cognitive and other human development in its policy and governance, while not disenfranchising the less-evolved world views of some of its members. As I've acknowledged in other posts, this is an elitist view in some ways. But the alternative is what we have now--a complete mess.
As a brief exercise that you can contemplate--especially if my comments rile you in any way in terms of an elitist bent--imagine that tomorrow morning you wake up in a world in which every adult in the world has access to a computer and is able to cast one vote for a one-world government, including an executive and a legislature. Assume the system is free of corruption--everyone's vote would count accurately. Candidates from all world views are vying for election.
What kind of government do you think we'd have? Do you believe it would be a democratic body, simply because everyone could vote? Do you believe it would have enlightened values, as a whole, because advanced technology is giving every person a vote? Do you think the elected officials would be most focused on peace, justice and ecology on a global perspective? Or, do you feel that we'd likely elect a completely divided legislature based on our varied world views, and an executive who's values meet the prevailing ethnocentric world view?
If the Integral Theorists are correct, we'd have a completely powerless legislature representing all world views and giving each an equal vote, and therefore resulting in no coherent policy; and we'd have an executive with, at very best, strong ethnocentric values. Most likely, we'd have nothing close to democracy. We'd have something far closer to an authoritarian regime as the movie 1984 suggested. Sadly, technology would only enhance its coercive power.
As a final thought, my comments and particular view are that for peace, justice and egalitarian human rights to flourish in an online community and in the world, the structures we build must acknowledge all world views, respect differences, but be built and governed with the highest levels of awareness and perspective, versus being structured and governed by lower levels of awareness. As long as the values accorded greatest voice are fear, defense and protection of any particular in-group, we will never achieve the goal of an enlightened society. Those values have relative value and should be accorded merit as such--relatively important in various contexts. But they should not and cannot be accorded preeminent value if we are to create something that moves beyond what we already have in the world.
Edward Rholl
President, Transformative Law
www.transformativelaw.com
a new mechanism
Hi,
As Sscorza mentioned, videoconferencing or SKYPE eases a way to know the other side. F2F communication would enable us to have an intuition about the other party and verbal communication would give us more information than the email correspondence.
In Japan, local farmers sell their fresh organic vegetables in Japan Agriculture centers. And they put small photos of their faces and brief comments on their products. And this method is encouraged, because customers know who is producing and responsible for the vegetables. In some online conferences there are some participants who put their photos next to their comments or threads. What would you think of this type of mechanismwhen we have only written communication?
As trustenabler said, a dispute resolution mechanism which ensures trust among members will definitely be needed, because as
Shunter said the members of a trusted culture do not want uncertainty. We avoid them. (Thank you, You opened my eyes on this!) It could be said that the dispute resolution mechanism assures members about their future certainty.
Shunter's comment reminds me of Edward Hall's words which said that "culture hides much more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants."
We all have different perceptions about trust, but one thing is clear, when trust is broken, it will take a very very long time to re-establish trust. And the only better way is to manage distrust. I think that is very sad.
Photos, Trust & Anonymity
Hi
I think the use of photos and other forms of identification and transparency is certainly valid and helpful in some contexts, especially e-commerce. Interestingly, in some contexts opaqueness can actually help build trust. As a Board Member for online therapy pioneer My Therapy Net (www.mytherapynet.com) I observed how clients were able to vastly increase the speed at which they could deal with and heal issues in online therapy sessions as opposed to in-office visits. When we researched the phenomenon what emerged from clients was the idea that they felt far more comfortable sharing personal information, especially regarding painful and embarrassing emotional issues, addiction issues, etc. within the context of an online session due to the perceived "safety" of speaking to a therapist without sharing the same physical space. The result was that clients often "opened up" and bared their souls to the online therapist in minutes or at least hours, rather than over a long course of in-office visits. Not only does this change the speed at which problems can be resolved, but it changes economic models in a big way!
This has really interesting application to the legal process. One can imagine the same ideas would hold true for children and other people faced with making difficult allegations or admissions in court. And, it may also generate a safer space for people in general to admit fault in some circumstances. When you combine this factor with more enlightened principles of justice, fairness and non-punitive legal process, you can see the beginnings of a legal system more grounded in truth-finding and healing. However, industry stakeholders who benefit economically from the current system will certainly not favor such changes.
My brief study of the Japanese legal system while in law school revealed to me that in a system (particularly the criminal system) based on facilitating admissions of guilt, but with far lower punitive repercussions, a very high percentage of defendants "come clean" which can of course lead to a healing far more profound for both victim and perpetrator than when a conviction is forced out by way of the American system where the defendant often never speaks. On the other hand, the American system may actually preserve individual rights better.
My point is that regardless of what the technology can or cannot accomplish, it will still be used "in" a particular system and therefore, it is the system itself--more than the technology--that will determine its value. One can imagine very draconian uses of the online justice system, as well as enlightened uses. That's why I believe our work is so important and has to be approached from the level of global consciousness and advanced notions of jstice, fairness and truth-finding. Our American system is, in so many ways, driven by economics. Those who profit from the current economic model of dispute resolution will have little interest in seeing its end. And, to protect their turf, are likely to play on the public's fear and mistrust of the Internet as a means to forestall any changes.
Edward Rholl
President, Transformative Law
www.transformativelaw.com
Certainly, one of the main
Certainly, one of the main constraints to the development of the Internet is the lack of trust of their users. Internet has gained an often undeserved reputation for being exclusively a source of spam, pornography and fraud. In addition, individuals engaging in e-commerce have quickly learnt that if they were involved in transactions where they were dissatisfied, they had little option but to accept the loss and move on. Clearly, new methods are needed to distinguish trusted online individuals as well as to resolve effectively disputes arising online. To date, one of the main candidates for this job was the development of trustmarks and ODR. These methods may come from public entities or private enterprises. Given the experience with TRUSTe and the difficulties encountered by many ODR pioneers I am more inclined to think that a public backing will be necessary.
Adding new technology into the law school curriculum
First of all, I would like to comment on the great ideas presented by the most recent posts. As I was reading TrustEnabler’s presentation on online trust, I was surprised to see my visualization of online trust analyzed as an exemplar of what businesses can do to build confidence online.
Over the years, we have watched eBay’s metamorphosis. From ePay to the fraud investigation program to Squaretrade, eBay’s dispute resolution system, eBay has lead the way in establishing trust on the internet.
Interestingly, many of eBay’s mechanisms for building trust are based on actions not character. As shunter points out, different cultures perceive behaviors differently. So how do we come up with a global trust network?
I propose a happy medium between the video conferencing suggested by sscorza and the capitalistic security measures explained by TrustEnabler. Video conferencing may help to give a literal “face” to interpersonal dealings on the internet, but as shunter explains, cultural differences become problematic. Furtherore, Security measures as used by large corporations such as eBay work well for mass commerce, but fail to promote working business relationships parallel to those in the “real world.”
I think the missing link lies with facilitators. We need individuals and firms educated in appropriate ODR. I use the term ODR to encompass relationships from negotiation through possible litigation. We need ODR at the transactional level to prevent conflicts in the future as well as to promote ongoing business relationships.
So how do we accomplish this goal? Conferences such as the International Forum on Dispute Resolution are a great start. But why not start even earlier by adding ODR to law school curriculum? As a current law student, I know how difficult it is to add requirements, but if we can bring the movement of ODR to the mainstream, concepts such as fraud prevention on the internet and online dispute systems may be incorporated into basic classes such as Contracts and Professional Responsibility. My generation is moving further and further into a technological system of capitalism, yet our curriculum remains stagnate.
What are your thoughts?
Hello, I also agree that
Hello,
I also agree that video conferencing and security measures will change our community, but many countries can not provide advanced technology to the individual level. I think, however, if we can connect cell phones with ODR systems or mechanisms, the online community will spread into less advanced countries. This is not a mechanism but it would be better to add cell phone features when we think about it.
What do you think?
Good luck on exams, Katherine!
My school offers Internet and the Law, so I have signed up for the fall course. I'm not sure how far into ODR it will go because two IP attorneys teach the class. I just finished up taking Labor and Arbitration, but my beloved processor is a technophobe whose online experience is limited to checking email. I think ODR would go far in unclogging the court system and would minimize the emotional turmoil of the process for the parties involved. How would you envision implementing such a large scale project?
jd2b
Tonight's Dinner with Tamar Frankel and others
I would like to share some of what we talked about at dinner tonight; our moderator and chief judge, Tamar Frankel, and several others who have been involved in internet governance over many years, all were at our dinner table. We talked about this contest and why it is so important.
How we build trust in cyberspace and whether we (civil society) can do it soon enough so that the normative culture of cyberspace is trusted behavior, is the reason for the contest. Clearly, many forms of behavior that are encouraged by anonymous internet structures are flourishing online- online gambling for all ages, pornography, including child pornography, criminal enterprise, even terrorism. It is easy to see why. When there aren't laws that govern a place (or, a space) effectively, for whatever the reasons, a wild west mentality takes hold. In cyberspace, noone knows which laws govern, and, when you combine that with anonymous behavior patterns, you have a recipe for disenfranchising law as a governor of behavor. What will replace law? The normative behavior of the community which emerges over time.
That is why we need you. We believe that you joined this contest because you want to build trusted relationships online. We believe that younger generations have a better handle on this concept, and, certainly understand the technology better than older generations. So we want to work with you to change the world by building trusted behaviors into the fabric of online behavior. Why?? Then we can promote economic justice online and bring the benefits of ecommerce across the digital divide as part of a campaign to promote trusted behavior online.
IBO's signature project is to promote economic justice by extending the reach of online payment systems to developing countries. Anonymity prevents that from happening in today's world. We believe we can change that. This conest is the first step in that direction.
Thank you for your participation!!
Everyone who has joined our contest, please post!!!
In the first days of our community, please suggest ways that you want to communicate with each other; we will adapt the technology as we can, to let you define how you want to demonstrate the nature of online trust, and to showcase your leadership skills in building online communities based on trusted behaviors. Threaded discussions, wikis... you tell us how you want to organize yourselves to inform us on trustbuilding behaviors in cyberspace.
Where is ODR going, to court or to college?
I must agree with khartung that the inclusion of ODR in law schools will increase our knowledge and interest in preventing disputes, as well as improving trust in the online communities. However, it can be argued that the most successful venture of ODR to date it has been the creation of new legal scholars to which I quite admire and enjoy reading.
It appears that ODR is in its infancy and it will be a question of time before it reaches every possible and reasonable aspect of the legal procedure (Colin Rule is able to envision a computer sitting on the judges’ chair!). I cannot know when and how will happen, but I think that the legislature have the duty of mandating the judiciary to offer online access to the courts, without imposing this online access to the parties. Once Internet users have access to justice, they might afford to trust the Internet; and law schools will not have the choice of ignoring ODR.
Second Life
In an effort to explore mechanisms that enable trust online, I started an experiment by forming a group in Second Life, called Second Canadians. It is still very preliminary, with only about 100 SL members. I have not done much with it so far, as it can be very time-consuming, except to post some preliminary (rambling) thoughts on a web page at http://www.igloo.org/secondcanadians.
My objective is to attract interest from similarly-minded individuals and organizations, so we can collaboratively create a model society online.
I would welcome your comments and contributions.
Power of Networks & Forums for Resolving Global Conflict
It feels like synchronicity that trustenabler spoke of Second Life. In an ODR weekend class taught by Colin Rule we spent quite some time exploring Second Life & There.com, musing on the possibilities with regard to using that kind of virtual world as a vehicle for conflict resolution globally. It got me thinking on using somewhere like There.com or Second Life as a safe secure space for facilitating mediations on a global scale. Or, the idea of using virtual realities to conduct wars so that no-one physically died and the world was spared all the atrocities and scarring.
A few days ago I was listening to NPR and the Managing Director of Forbes was talking about May’s issue which was highlighting the power of networks in the world. He spoke of the One Laptop One Child project (OLPC)
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit association dedicated to research to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. This initiative was launched by faculty members at the MIT Media Lab. It was first announced by Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte, now chairman of OLPC, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005. Here is the web site : http://laptop.org/ Thought it a fascinating example of emergence and the power of self-determining teams/global networks. Perhaps ODR Professional communities could reach out to Nicholas Negroponte and collaborate on conflict resolution programs in countries like Sudan & Uganda with OLPC as a subproject within a greater program to resolve genocidal conflicts in a There.com or Second Life space.
Leadership and model society
This is a chance for me to say that one of the most important points for running this contest is for InternetBar (IBO) to help organize that part of the 'model online society' most interested in reaching consensus on its most important values. IBO's organizational job is both to have the consensus building discussion AND to attract and get people to participate in the conversation about values. So is it possible for you to attract the second life community members you've attracted to your discussion to join our contest and carry on the 'values' part of the broader society discussion here?
Risk of partcipation in restrictive societies
I suppose that I am interested in the possibilities that on-line communities may offer to citizens of particularly restrictive societies. Indeed, in such nations, on-line communities may offer a much-needed source of expression and outlet with other like-minded people. I do worry quite a bite, however, about the safety/risk of being able to engage in on-line communities in repressive societies without being detected by governments.
Hi susananotar, I think your
Hi susananotar,
I think your concern has a point. If there is conflict of interests between members of an online community and the outside authority, the community may be threatened. If, however, we look at this from other angle, online citizens can create a one big voice against the outside authority. It depends on how we can collaborate and trust each other online. And in addition, we can deal without any physical violence in the virtual world. That could be the advantage, I think.
100th Monkey Effect - Reply to susananotar
I grew up in South Africa, my adolescence occurring at the same time as the rolling mass action leading towards the release of Mandela in 1990 and the unbanning of the African National Congress. I was 17 at that time. From the age of 14 I became very politically involved in an anti-apartheid organization called PUPA (Pupils United for Peace and Awareness) The idea of the name was imminent change and transformation. Our mission was to ensure that no white South African could ever claim with any validity that “We didn’t know what was going on”. So we spent most of our energy on distributing information illegally at the time about the atrocities being committed by the Nationalist Party in control against nonwhites. When I was 16 I became chair of this organization and hosted illegal meetings at my home for the ANC Youth and Western Cape Student Congress (WECSCO). The aim being to brainstorm ways of protesting to achieve desegregation. We collaborated with other organizations like IDASA (Institute for Democratic Action in South Africa) to host and put together Education Summits for educational specialists and students to address segregation of schools. These conferences were illegal at the time as any gathering including non-whites & whites was deemed illegal. We also worked closely with ‘young lions’ in the ANC Youth to organize beach protests. At one of these I witnessed extreme violence. Friends of mine in IDASA met with me to give me illegal pamphlets to distribute at my school exposing the propaganda of the regime and the prolific torture and atrocities occurring as perpetrated by the government at the time. These friends were subsequently arrested and tortured and asked for the names of people in PUPA. My house was bugged and constantly at every meeting there was always the presence outside of a white van with dark windows. My mother taught at ‘non-white’ schools which was frowned upon and was frequently harassed by the police at the time. Soooo…..susananotar, your post spoke to me in terms of repressive societies and the safety of engaging in on-line communities. It is strange, but I feel from my experience of participating in a revolution, that courage is a necessary ingredient for achieving/bringing about world transformation and that no amount of regulations, good intentions or planning or safety nets can take away that necessity for courage and for being prepared to do things that could result in harm to one’s self. It feels to me as if the energy behind speaking out despite fear of personal injury and desire for personal safety is the energy that fuels mass mobilization for change. Speaking out in the name of peace, justice and compassion in online forums could accelerate the ‘100th Monkey Phenomenon’ (mogino’s “One Voice”) in terms of human evolution whereby elevated thinking (Ed, I’ve caught the elitist bug;-o) or ‘second-tier moral consciousness’ as mentioned by Ed reaches a critical mass and mass consciousness shifts.
Shunter on Restrictive Societies
Shunter--thank you for sharing about your experiences in South Africa. I cannot even imagine being in such circumstances and I was really moved by reading your story of the willingness to go against clearly unjust law in order to move an entire society out of the Dark Ages.
I do not want in any way to diminish the very personal and poignant essence of what you wrote, but I do want to add that as I read your words I was also thinking beyond the actual events and people in South Africa and thinking about how nearly any entrenched power structure will, by definition, oppose change to the order of things that may destroy its hegemony. As we address the issues related to trust, e-commerce and changes in the legal profession, I think it will do us well to be realistic about the challenges facing us in each of these areas.
One thing we can do is consider who or what might actually benefit and want to see a continuation of basic distrust between people--online or offline? In addition, we might think about what interests are viewing global e-commerce from a predatory perspective versus an egalitarian, open-market perspective? Finally, we would do well to understand that many well-entrenched interests in the legal profession have little desire to see wider and cheaper access to legal information and justice.
When I think about these things I tend to look at those stages of consciousness I have been writing about. I don't see conspiracies and evil people or bureauocracies so much as I see levels and waves of consciousness naturally creating structures given by their own levels of awareness; then, like most other "living" things, protecting their turf. From this perspective, we can look for solutions which move the world beyond the lower-level consciousness structures in ways that don't massively and directly threaten to bring the current paradigm crashing down in a dramatic revolutionary manner. We can do this by doing what Ken Wilber calls "including and transcending" which simply means we find some aspects of the current paradigm that do have value and we include those things in the new transcendant creation.
However, when we move beyond theory and into practice, those of us--like you--who have had to act in the face of tyranny and oppression, clearly have the experience and wisdom to teach us all how to push the envelope when pushing hard is the only viable way forward.
Edward Rholl
President, Transformative Law
www.transformativelaw.com
Culture Understanding
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. While I never experienced situations such as this in my own life, I did have the pleasure of living in Iran during the overthrow in 1978. That situation totally changed my understanding of what other people go through and struggle with. It struck me that in a utopian online community, there would be no barriers to shared consciousness. One thought I had is something equivalent to Wikipedia where a person could look up information on people of a country written by the people of that specific group. The only censoring would be by other members of that group and would be free from media spins or political and social bias. Knowing the customs and traditions of a country could help all members of an online community to communicate and better understand each other’s points of view and help to alleviate cultural misunderstandings.
Meet and Greet?
This discussion is hoppin’. I would love to do a live chat session to further our dialogue. Some of my favorite new posts: Don pointing out the major “tone” issues in the online world of communication. How do we fix that? Video conferencing or cell phones would be great, but I wonder if developing a new technology that combines the familiarity of traditional forms of communication with the ease and anonymity of the internet would be a possibility. After wearing a suit all day, I love to come home and work on the computer in my sweats. Also, I still do a lot of business over the phone. So where is the happy medium. Can we build trust without faces or voices? Do we need to inject personality into our business transactions? Thoughts?
Live Chat Coming Soon to InternetBarContest.org
Agaric Design Collective will make the feature of live chat for logged-in users of this site available shortly!
Integral Theory & Trusted Online Communities
Hello to Everyone!
I'm excited to play a role in this very important endeavor. As I view the many posts in the forums I plan to keep an eye on the level of Integral thinking that we, as a cross-cultural and cross-border community, can achieve. Integral Theory has been around for some time, but has gained most visibility through the work of Ken Wilber (www.kenwilber.com, www.integralinstitute.org). It is a complex and multifaceted body of knowledge, but at its most distilled essence it stands for the proposition that all of human endeavor, communication and development--including each specific instance--operates in four quadrants that roughly correlate to the basic perspectives that cognitively developed people can take: I, you/we, it and its.
Beyond these perspectives, Integral Theory incorporates the work of social demographers to create a kind of matrix of consciousness that can be seen empirically in extremely clear ways. When you put the two together you can clearly pinpoint the specific ways that individuals, communities and cultures view the world.
At this point in human development most of the world (roughly 70%) is at a level of consciousness (note: you may, but need not, relate to the word "consciousness" in a spiritual context to understand Integral Theory) that is ethnocentric or lower (lower stages include mythic, archaic, magic) and for that reason it is extremely difficult to communicate across these very real consciousness-based divides in awareness, understanding and perspective. Beyond this, one can see how difficult it is to create a body of rules, mores or written laws that seek to govern an activity that people of all states of consciousness have access to and can use for one reason or another.
The Internet operates in all four quadrants. In the personal, interior quadrant it is a personal tool we can use for work, pleasure, connection to others, etc. We relate to it based on our level of personal conscious development, which includes our cognitive development. The first quadrant is how you "feel" about the Internet and its role in your life and the life of the world. In the "it" quadrant--personal exterior--it operates as an "object"--a set of technological tools that is a kind of extended brain we can use. Like an organix brain it can malfunction. In the "you/we" quadrant it operates as a fundamental communication tool, and it is both an awesome power to connect us and a tool that can be used for abuse, crime, coersion, etc. In the fourth quadrant it operates as a cultural object--how an entire culture relates to and regulates this technology has EVERYTHING to do with the overall consciousness level of that culture.
The law operates most presciently in this fourth quadrant--especially with regard to building online communities populated, in the case of the Internet, with people from many cultures, with many values and with many different world views. As I said earlier, the prevailing world view on the planet today is ethnocentric ("I love my own and I hate you and/or fear you if you are not in my group"). This means that most people in the world see things from, at best, the perspective of their own ingrained cultural paradigms. In addition, a good part of the world lives below this level, primarily at the mythic level (Reality is "pre-given" by god or gods and we merely interpret what is right for our group based on the given logos) and we see this mostly with regard to religious wars and extreme myopic viewpoints.
What we have in our hands is a global technology, but we are trying to expand it, regulate it and use it across tremendously wide divides in consciousness, worldview, cultural norms and individual cognitive differences. Our challenge in this contest and in the greater commitments we have to creating a peaceful, trusting world (at least online) is to somehow cross these divides. There is a notion of elitism in this challenge. It has to be this way at first, because in order to create something of the highest order cognitively, socially, culturally, personally and spiritually, those at higher levels of awareness (which means those who can take and integrate multiple perspectives) have to lead the way. If they (we) do their jobs well, the new world created by their efforts will be available for use and enjoyment by all people, regardless of their level of development.
However, if the rules, regulation and use of the Internet is developed and enforced by lower levels of consciousness, awareness, worldview and cognitive ability, then the technology will never reach its ultimate utility and, in fact, is likely to be even more uncertain, dangerous, punitive and coercive than it is today. It is easy to work with, communicate and trust somebody who sees the world in the same way that you do. It is less easy to undertake these things with others who see the world in a completely different way. To work together and meet online together, we have to find a way to bridge this gap.
Most of us are stuck at an ethnocentric level of awareness and values. Yet, we've created a global communication matrix. Think of that! We've created a set of tools that allows for communication and collaboration globally, thus FAR exceeding the conscious awareness of the population using it--70% of which cannot even think, act or see globally. Our choice as a global culture is to either work for the development of the Internet AS a global cultural, social, professional and personal network based on global level awareness, principles and values, OR to allow prevailing forces to develop this technology primarily as a means for corruption, crime, coersion and exploitative commerce and misinformation.
Here's the rub: people living at a mythic or ethnocentric level of awareness cannot responsibly manage and set policy for anything (much less a highly technically advanced communication system) from a global-centric perspective, because they are not capable of taking a global-centric perspective on anything. This is the lesson the Integral theorists have demonstrated clearly and empirically. Ethnocentric awareness creates ethnocentric rules based on ehtnocentric values. This will not ever lead to a workable body of rules, regulation and best practices for a global technology.
Those of you involved in this contest as participants and judges would never even have been interested in this if you did not already have a higher level of consciousness--at least cognitively. Our task is immense, but the payoff is amazing. Whatever we conceive of here or in other initiatives with which we are involved is sure to meet with fear, anger, disregard and perhaps outright objection from certain corners--particularly those who's worldviews are tribal, ethnocentric or national-centric and grounded in fear, division and a desire to protect and defend. On the other hand, the ideas, concepts, models and policy suggestions we conceive of today can shape tomorrow as more members of the human race evolve into higher states of awareness. In fact, the Internet itself is THE great awakening tool, if it survives as such in a world challenged so deeply by division.
At any rate, I'm so pleased to take part in these discussions and I look forward to meeting and dialoging with many of you!
Regards,
Edward Rholl
President, Transformative Law
www.transformativelaw.com
Hello
Orna
Hello all, I am delighted to serve as a judge in this contest. I read the posts with great interest and look forward to continuing this conversation. I am an assistant prof. of law at the University of Haifa and am also a mediator and teach ADR-related courses. A few thoughts that come to mind as I read your posts - to what extent can we import those trust-generating mechanisms that exist offline to the online arena? what are the ways for generating trust online that are unique to the online setting? can you identify contextual elements that impact trust online? Good night for now from Israel...
Feedback + Trustmark = Trust?
Can the synergy of feedback and trustmarks contribute to increase online trust?
I am fascinated with the way eBay has achieved the trust of millions of customers by using a very effective feedback system. Unfortunately, we haven’t succeeded in replicating a feedback system for the global e-commerce market. Often, when we find a new website selling something we generally have concerns that the supplier may be a con, or that the product is not as good as advertised. I wonder if trustmark schemes could carry out these ratings for those enterprises which choose it.
The first likely obstacle is that probably many businesses would not want to participate in a trustmark scheme that could give them negative feedback. However, if the trustmark scheme is a reputable one (i.e. with public backing) and the business is a small enterprise that doesn’t have anything to lose by opening its product to the global market, it might be worth for the business to join. Perhaps, something like that would only work with small businesses, but that would be a step forward to improve the trust of the online community as well as the competence in the global market, which is still dominated by large corporations. What do you think?
Trustmarks
Hi Pablo,
I think you make an excellent point about trustmarks. I think much of the focus in e-commerce systems up to now has been related more to security in payment systems, which is obviously very important. But, now that SSL and intermediaries like VeriSign and others can handle much of the payment security issues (at least much of the time) I join you in hoping that more thought and attention is put into trustmarks and other forms of public approval or disapproval systems.
I think probably much of the reticence in businesses to a very public forum for voicing customer dissatisfaction--and where the company has little or no editorial control--stems from the fear of negative and widespread commentary which might be unfair, exaggerated or otherwise made for less than just reasons. In a sense this is what we are seeing in the world of blogs, where lambasting businesses and individuals often runs amok. In the US (and perhaps elsewhere now) the BBB traditionally played the role of rating businesses for good service and good customer relationship management. I've also seen several web 2.0 sites that encourage rating of businesses in a variety of ways.
One site, I believe called Ask Alice or something like that, allows people to rate their experiences with local contractors so that other members of the site can get in-depth information before hiring plumbers, electricians and others. If I'm a lousy plumber with poor customer service I hate this! If I have great customer relationships and provide good service I probably love this site. The fear, however, is what impact can one or two unhappy customers make to an otherwise excellent portfolio of clients? This is in my mind one of the big challenges to fairness in the online world that moves so fast and allows people to rant, castigate and condemn so easily.
Nonetheless, transparency--or at least shall we say "translucence" is here for good and companies will increasingly have to deal with at least quasi-public commentary on customer policy, product/service quality and corporate conduct. On the other hand, my view is that the public also bears a greater responsibility for being fair or at least factual in its commentary and evaluation of a company, product, service or customer service experience. By analogy, the rating system on Amazon.com seems to work fairly well. For the most part the reviews are at least well-reasoned even if the reviewer does not recommend a particular book or other product. I can say the same for www.epinions.com. There are always a few people who simply had a bad experience and want to vent, but by and large the reviews are fairly balanced.
When companies learn that basically they can trust the public I think more translucence will become the rule. I wholeheartedly agree with you in terms of the impact such a scheme could have for small businesses with less brand recognition. Like many people, I am one who more often than not purchases a product from Amazon or other sites I've come to know and trust, rather than from a small business website--if I have the choice. However, if that small site had some kind of "trusted company" designation then I, personally, would choose to support the small business directly and I think a lot of other people would as well.
Brand recognition means so much in a global marketplace. In the past when, I used to eat fast-food while traveling (ugh, now I can't bear to think of all the junk I once ate!) when I was driving and found a freeway exit I'd go for McDonalds or some other well-known brand 100% of the time. Somehow it seemed less risky than the local burger place because, I guess, I felt the name brand place would be more likely to be clean and have fresh food. In reality this was probably NOT the case (see Fast Food Nation) but the brand made the difference. In the online world I'm sure the same phenomenon is at least as prevalent. Yet, if the global marketplace ideal is to become a reality, then we all have to be willing to have at least some trust and affinity for the "small person" and perhaps your concept of trustmarks and some kind of global standard of trust based on public feedback is a great start.
If this can happen, perhaps one day the quote DeToqueville made about the U.S. in the early 1800s--"they are a nation of shopkeepers" will apply to the global online marketplace. If so, trust will be the foundation upon which it is built.
Edward Rholl
President, Transformative Law
www.transformativelaw.com
ratings and transparency
I believe that the online contractor rating site you referred to is Angie's list. I have had the personal experience of working on the development of another website which took that a step further. In order to promote fairness, they are not only using customer feedback for their rating system but allowing the service providers to respond to the feedback and have open dialogs with customers. This added step seems important to open exchange while also allowing for a degree of transparency or "translucence" as you mentioned. Not only are we exposed to the rating but we become privy to the contextual discussion about the specific incidence. I believe that a rating system in imperative in promoting some degree of trust that we lose when we move towards online interactions.
I also believe that in addition to being able to read and understand the ratings of online netizens, we must also be able to trust that the person will not just assume a new online identity in order to shed any negative ratings or comments that have been assigned. It is my opinion that the only way to create this trust is to incorporate a human aspect to the moderation of any community site. As a user, I need to know that somebody with negative rankings doesn't just create a new account and start over. There needs to be some monitoring of new members to make sure that legitimacy and integrity are maintained in the community.
Greetings & a Reply
First I would like to start by saying hello to all the participants and judges of this awesome endeavour, which I am very excited to be a part of it. I am an undergrad in the Justice Studies program and am doing my course online so I appreciate the essence of what we are trying to accomplish here. When we began our course (which is a 2yr online program with two on-campus residential intakes) we started with 3wks on campus. This gave us the opportunity to establish some relationships and put faces and personalities to names. This to me has made all the difference. We also as a class came up with our own ‘code of ethics’ that would govern our interactions with each other over the next two years. Once this ‘code of ethics’ was written we all signed off on it and each received a copy. It is a simple code that enforces respect for one another and through that respect we are honouring the other person in their academic journey. A lot of great points have been brought up here so far and I look forward to dialoguing with many of you as through these ideas we seek to cultivate and shape a structure that will see the on-line world utilized to its greatest potential.
Looking at gravityman's comment on 'ratings and transparency' to me continues to enforce a fundamental principle (one that has already been brought up by many participants), and that is trust. Trust needs to be established before anyone will move forward in any substancial agreement. That is true of personal relations and public relations (in the sense of business interactions and the economy). In order to be able to trust that an promised interaction will take place we need to feel confident that if it doesn't their will be sufficient repercussions for the individual that breaches anothers trust. We also need opportunity and avenues in which to build that trust, which would enforce a sense of accountability.
Reply to Angelina
Hi Angelina,
Great points about trust and levels of intimacy/interaction between people. I'm curious, what do you think about the utility of things like video podcasts, IM and live webcast/web cam technologies as an attempt to replicate the physical world "closeness" one gets in face-to-face situations? Obviously, such tools cannot ever completely replicate what we can learn about one another from face-to-face meetings, but do you think these tools can bridge the gap effectively enough, at least in the business context, to help establish higher levels of trust?
Edward Rholl
President, Transformative Law
www.transformativelaw.com
Technology that binds
I think you bring up a great point by suggesting the addition of supplemental technologies such as podcasts etc. I think that one of the use of such technologies gives people another great method for communicating and making up for the visual cues that we lose in an online community. I believe that being able to hear a voice or see a person establishes a level of trust and familiarity that traditional methods have failed to account for. I believe that hearing a person’s tone or watching their visual cues gives up a better point of reference and a greater understanding about the message delivered.
Another point that I think is important is the viral marketing aspect of podcasts and video casts. With so many people using rss feeds for information and looking to sites like YouTube for real videos , alternative forms of user driven marketing results in other people giving more weight to the reliability and credibility of a online community.
I believe that these additional technologies are some of the elements missing in sites like second life. I have heard of some people having a really good experience and meeting likeminded community members but I found that the community was still very anonymous and required a high degree of trust in the way people represent themselves. If I have a choice between trusting a stranger in an online community or being able to listen to podcasts or watching video casts, I will look to the additional information every time in forming my opinions.
Hi Ed, After some thought,
Hi Ed,
After some thought, and in regards to the business context, I think a fair evaluation of whether such technologies would be an asset in bridging the gap that the virtual world presents would be ‘what is the type of relationship that one is seeking to establish?’. On a basic level of business transactions, such as a consumer ordering/purchasing goods online I think it would be an unnecessary step. When I make that statement I am considering only purchases that an average income consumer would make such as clothing, furniture, sporting goods, etc. In these cases having the option of live chat with a representative from the company available for additional help is very beneficial and sufficient. Looking higher up on the ladder of business transactions I think most cases would benefit from using technology that would allow for visual and audio contact. Such examples would be an international company seeking to establish relationships with global employees (and vise-versa), to secure a business partnership, or colleagues seeking to work together internationally. Andy p in “Technology that binds” brought up a key point that I have also been considering and that is the aspect of non-verbal communication that one looses out on in an online community. I think the more senses we engage the greater ability we have to perceive and evaluate decisions that must be made, and with that will come greater confidence to move forward with such transactions.
Sincerely, Angelina
Reply to Andy P
Hi Andy,
Great comments and I like the approach taken by the site you worked on. That is definitely what some would call a Resolutionary approach to problem solving and conflict resolution. As you pointed out, context is so important to presenting a valid overview of any situation. I tend to agree that in most cases where there is going to be a commentary-based interchange between people online that true identity is absolutely needed. I think in other contexts where, for example, role-playing is a part of interactions between people then anonymity is probably a useful thing. But for the vast majority of commerce-related connections between people to me transparency is a must.
Edward Rholl
President, Transformative Law
www.transformativelaw.com
Trust, Transparency and Business
Orna
One issue that seems to come up is the connection between transparency and trust and the related hesitance of businesses to become more transparent (thereby failing to strengthen trust). What these businesses often fail to realize is that by embracing technologies that enhance transparency, they not only gain trust from customers, but are also able to improve the business' products and services. Digital technologies - through real time documentation of activities and low cost easy to perform monitoring, enhance accountability and allow businesses to study their performance, methods, tools and outcomes. It makes economic sense for businesses to adopt technologies that simulatneously enhance transparency (and trust) and the company's performance. eBay got it. It may take other businesses a little more time, but in a reality in which news travels quickly across geographical borders they will eventually get it, or end up paying a price.
Building transparency & trust with the business communities
Orna: I believe that once we have experience on line and the uniqueness and positivity of on line communications can be recognized by all ODR and these processes will be more accepted by all who use it and the process will attract newcomers as well. I would encourage those of us in the ADR/ODR field to consider working with others who are new to it and find ways to educate the businesses that might not trust it. Building on line training opportunities, on line conferences, and allow people from all cultures and backgrounds to use this form of communications will begin to break down the barriers.
I believe that the biggest barrier are the economic differences that exist in the world today. Most who use on line communications are educated and financially independent. The people of the world who are unemployed or do not even know where their next meal is coming from have no access to this type of commmunication or engagement process. They lack trust in many processes and communicating with them is important as well. How do we educate and involve them?
Business communities are economically engaged and most are likely involved in internet communcation opportunities. I believe that businesses and people tend to follow the path of least resistance. Businesses generally don't undertake to make rapid changes unless they can perceive a major positive change in their organzation or an opportunity that does not exist without change. So from that perspective I would encourage all involved in this opportunity to put out how you build trust in a new process, how we engage others from all cultures and life experiences to participate and teach each other so we can learn together and become a world of people learning and trusting each other rather than a world of disparate parts that exist but fail to interact. The internet can help us build a stronger more connected world!
Namaste,
Don
Online businesses
I'm new on this forum and have been intrigued by the previous discussions that have been posted. Today I picked up Fortune Magazine and read an article about the Blue Nile Company, which sells jewlery online. As a successful leader of a virtual company, the CEO of Blue Nile explained some of the key components of keeping his organization prosperous. One of the problems he faces is that he can't see his customers, so essentially it's important for him to experience what his customers experience. To do so, every morning while he goes through the electronic reports, he also listens to the customer call center, both to ensure that his customers are happy online and also to make sure that the call center is doing its job. Just from the story, I've gained greater insight as to what it means to build trust; we tend to forget that there's a driving human component to creating a virtual corporate world. The internet company itself, in building trust, must encompass its values from a top-down or bottom-up management perspective, much like other corporate organizations that exist elsewhere. I agree, trust marks and ratings are a driving factor for building trust, but it's also important (as Orna noted in her previous post) that organizations build the same exact values within it's own walls.
Another interesting site I wanted to bring up for discussion is craigslist. Interestingly enough, the site remains a popular trading, bartering, and e-bay-like place for everyone or anyone willing to establish trust on their own. Friends of mine use the site to buy and sell items because they claim it cuts out the middle man (i.e. eBay). No extra fees, more convenient, and yep that's right---no ratings. So how come craigslist remains the local city site for a lot of people? I can't say I've got it right just yet, but perhaps its got something to do with the definition of established trust having completely different meanings between people from even the same society.
Assumptions of universal standards, culture, and trust
Hi,
I am happy to participate in this discussion as a judge. I teach dispute resolution at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst, USA. The engagements so far have raised a number of interesting points. Mogino, you write of the impact of culture and the assumption of universality on trust and standards. This is an intriguing and important topic. Many articulate that cyberspace offers access and connection that breaks barriers of time and space. However, does it break the barriers of culture? And if not, as many others would argue, then how do we create community norms across cultures? Are there mechanisms for fostering norm/standards creation that attend to cultural differences online? Does the anonymity of online interaction make attention to cultural differences more opaque? I look forward to reading further contributions on these topics.
Leah
Re:
Hi Leah,
I've been thinking about this subject and started to think that the online communities are creating their own new cultures which are beyond traditional cultures. The members are from different cultures originally, but they have some commonalities which drive them to create a group. And consciously or unconsciously, they overcome such differences. Consciously, they can create their own codes of ethics and abide by it. Unconsciously, they put their original cultural values aside and devote themselves to be part of the group. The difference is people can choose a community which they want to belong whereas the traditional cultures are assigned to them when they were born. They have no control about it.
A community like this attract people of the wolrd who have something in common. We are all serious about "trusting relationship". And I think, this discussion forum enable us to find our own community culture which will be beyond our cultural differences.
New Cultures of Trust
I completely agree with you about online communities creating new cultures. I think that the internet, by its very nature attracts people who seek knowledge in all of its many forms. That is the common thread, active seeking and intellectual tenacity. The issue of trust is broached as soon as a person chooses to communicate online. I liken the blogs and chat rooms of today to the amateur radio operators and short wave radio enthusiasts of the past. People have always had a desire to reach out and express their thoughts and ideas, with that desire comes a certain level of trust that we willingly trade in exchange for the opportunity to relate to others. Online we can avoid the assigned groups that you mentioned. A certain level of trust and acceptance must be exchanged freely and taken at face value because if we proceed with the same type of reservations and cynicism that dominates our physical communities, how can we inspire other seekers to elevate themselves and the online community as a whole to a higher level?
Barriers of Cultural Miscommunications
One avenue that I would like to explore is what are the barriers of cultural miscommunication? Is something received in the same context in which it is communicated, and if not how is that rectified? When looking at IBO’s signature project which is to “promote economic justice by extending the reach of online payment systems to developing countries” (Jeff Aresty, Tonight’s Dinner with Tamar Frankel and others), I think that communication that surpasses cultural barriers is a foundational step to ensuring trust online. Even in f2f interactions when there is a miscommunication the success of a transaction is affected, how much more so when you are crossing cultural, proximity, and familiarity barriers. Therefore, I believe that one of the greatest unintentional breaches of trust take place in the context of a miscommunication.
With that said, it is my hope that the formation of a cyber world will encourage the expressions and identification with ones culture. Cultural diversity is what makes this world a richer place and is what has even created the desire and need to network and transact internationally.
Culture Convergence Model
In the recent past, I was involved in an arbitration in which a significant aspect of the dispute was related to the location of a comma in a sentence and the interpretation of the meaning of the comma. The participants involved were originally from Missouri, California, New York, Iran, and Mexico. Based on that experience, when considering the question “How do we create a trusting community on the Internet,” I believe we must first understand the many cultural differences of the participants involved, and then consider the impact of those cultural differences on the potential for misinterpretation of the printed word and the eventual erosion of trust.
To build trust on the Internet, I believe that we must have a sincere and empathetic understanding of the different cultural context of participants and how that impacts communication and promises made by participants during Internet dialogue. We must educate ourselves as to cultural differences that lead to misinterpretations because often trust is broken as a result of interpretations based on those differences and not false or malevolent intent.
As an LLM student studying dispute resolution at the University of Missouri in Columbia, the most enlightening class I have taken is Professor Ilhyung Lee’s cross-cultural negotiation class. Inspired by his class, I will explore the affect of cultural differences on building trust on the Internet and the need for education as a prerequisite to meaningful Internet dialogue during dispute resolution.
In my next post, I will discuss the elements of culture that impact communication and how those elements can lead to misinterpretations and erode trust. In later posts, I will discuss Geert Hofstede’s four primary cultural dimensions: uncertainty avoidance, individualism and collectivism, power distance, and the masculinity index. I will also discuss Edward T. Hall’s cultural cues specifically monochromic and polychronic time orientation, and high and low context communication styles. In answer to the question, “What other mechanisms can be established to create a trusting and trusted community in the virtual world?” I will propose a culture convergence model for use by Trust Facilitators and as an educational tool to assist us all in building a community of trust and provide a basis to believe that others do tell the truth and keep their promises.
In conclusion to this post and for the purpose of future posts, please consider the following definition of culture:
Culture is ‘a fundamental feature of human consciousness, the sine qua non of being human’; culture is our ‘social legacy’; culture may take over the world. Culture has also been described as ‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.’ There is no shortage of proposed definitions—150, according to one study. The definition of culture remains elusive and contested. The various definitions exist in part because the term is used by experts in a number of different social fields.”) (footnotes omitted). Lee, Culturally-Based Copyright Systems? The U.S. and Korea in Conflict, 79 Wash. U. L.Q. 1103, 1109–1110.
Cultural conflicts of copyright law
Hi Kmprafka,
Your post was interesting and led me to go to the WIPO website to learn more about Copyright law and internet treaties. Below is an excerpt from there website:
" Two 1996 treaties negotiated under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) update international copyright standards for the Internet era. The WIPO "Internet" Treaties lay the groundwork for the healthy expansion of electronic commerce in countries that ratify them, including the possibility of more and better jobs, more secure and diversified economies, and greater social and cultural advancement. The WCT entered into force on March 6, 2002, and the WPPT entered into force on May 20, 2002. Currently 64 countries have ratified the WCT and 62 countries have ratified the WPPT.
The importance of ratification and deposit of the WCT and WPPT for a country's economy and culture cannot be overstated. For instance:
Electronic commerce can help overcome existing barriers to access to scientific, medical and technical data, educational materials, and technical and productivity software. Trade in these vital resources, needed for prosperity and competitive advantage in the Information Age, will be much cheaper, more efficient, and easier in a digital networked marketplace.
Electronic commerce can help attract higher and more consistent levels of foreign direct investment in high technology and information-intensive businesses. A host of service, processing and other functions can conveniently be out-sourced, which in turn will enhance the skills and opportunities of a country's citizenry.
Electronic commerce can help build stronger economic, social, and cultural links in the region, without regard to geographic proximity.
Electronic commerce can provide an enormous boost to a country's cultural and creative industries. Through digital networks, that country's music, art, literature, and folklore can reach new markets throughout the world, and be delivered directly to paying customers around the globe.
To fully implement the WIPO Internet Treaties, countries will need to upgrade their copyright laws, whether through minor changes or more substantial revisions. When implementation is complete, each country will have:
Protections against the unlawful circumvention of effective technologies that right holders use to prevent theft of their creations.
Protections against the unlawful tampering with tags and codes associated with copies of protected works and phonograms that are used to facilitate legitimate distribution and licensing.
Recognition of extended or clarified rights for copyright owners: for example, a right to control distribution of copies of creations, and a right to control communications of a work, including the "making available" of a work or phonogram to the public in an interactive manner.
Harmonized protections (through implementation of the WPPT) for the rights of performers and producers of phonograms."
I am interested in hearing your thoughts about how we can achieve culturally sensitive copyright systems in order to create stronger treaties.
jd2b
anonymity vs. privacy
Hi everyone!
I’m just finishing up my 2nd year of law school and am very interested in this blog! I took an arbitration seminar as well as an intellectual property course this semester, and have signed up for 1st Amendment and internet law next semester.
As a consumer who relies on the internet for shopping and financial transactions, I know how vital trustmarks are to world wide commerce. As a mother of 5 children ranging in age from 2 years to 21 years, I am concerned about online safety. The biggest threat to both of these concerns is the absolute anonymity afforded to users.
In order to facilitate an online community of trust, we necessarily must strike a balance between preventing absolute anonymity while protecting privacy. Absolute anonymity provides a cloak of impunity that may entice deviant behavior and criminal enterprise. Mandatory identification disclosure, on the other hand, will expose people to identity theft and other types of victimization by those who know how to skirt the system.
As ISP’s are being exposed to more and more lawsuits, it is in their best interest to create a secure database so that users of their services will have to verify their real identities before being assigned an on-line identity. This does raise serious privacy concerns, especially in the wake of our US government mining such databases looking for “terrorists.” However, absolute anonymity is nearly impossible to achieve in the real world, so no one is entitled to an expectation of such anonymity in the virtual world.
I like what Yahoo is doing with the little customizable people icons. I think this idea should be expanded to create social filters. The problem with anonymity is that there are no social filters restricting people’s online activity. In a F2F interaction, people are restrained by social pressures to filter their communication and behavior. However, once online, there is nothing between the acts of typing odious words and pushing the send button. Electronic communication lets us tell people what we really feel without the immediate consequences inherent in a F2F interaction. If we take the person icon and animate it with social filters such as emoticons, this would allow us to interact more naturally on line.
I look forward to hearing everyone’s ideas!
Jd2b
Trust at many sites
I’ve been watching this interesting discussion develop for a while now, but haven’t had time to contribute, so please forgive me if this turns into a monster of a post . . .
It might be important to consider the way that trust exists at a number of sites in any interaction (but particularly in an online community): interpersonal, organisational or community.
At the most immediate level, there is the interpersonal trust that exists between the individuals interacting.
Picking up on what jd2b has to say - it does seem that there is a trade-off between accountability and privacy. Research by Olson & Olson, Bos, Gergle and Olson in Human Computer Interaction has shown that interpersonal trust in an on-line environment is often low and ‘fragile’ (trust violations have a greater impact than in a face-to-face relationship). It has also been found that the perception of geographical, ideological or social distance, between participants reduces trust. It appears that when parties feel that they can’t be held accountable for their action, or that others are unaccountable, trusting behaviour is diminished.
However, findings indicate that trust can be engendered by disclosing personal information prior to interaction. A face-to-face meeting engenders most trust; followed by a picture; then a brief resume; then no information. It seems that even the smallest amount of additional social information serves to engender a rapport between parties, minimises perceptions of distance (geographical/social/ideological) and increases perception of accountability.
At the organisational level, parties trust that the provider can identify and prevent or punish violations of trust. The policies and procedures that an organisation uses to manage interaction will be assessed by clients to ascertain the degree to which they trust the site. Parties will look to see if the organisation minimises the potential for trust violations (e.g. eBay’s rating system, which forces individuals to be accountable in the form of feedback ratings, or security information on bank websites that indicate why trust violations are not possible), or transfers the risk/liability of violations from the individual, to the organisation itself (e.g. security certificates, or the organisation’s reputation). At this level trust can be engendered through considered design of policy and processes.
At the highest level is trust in the community in which interaction takes place. This can be seen as the degree to which fellow participants share a set of values or an ideology. On the surface, this seems like a good idea, if people share a set of values, violations of trust are less likely and less likely to be dramatic. If these values include trust and assuming good intentions (as advocated in Wikipedia), then it can mitigate the need to consider how trust is engendered at the lower levels. However, trusted values and ideologies is exactly the sort of thing exploited by Phishing attacks (e-mails that come from supposed trusted sources, but that direct the user to a site where personal and/or account information is obtained without their consent). By creating an e-mail that conforms and represents the norms of the groups, a Phisher leverages the trust that parties share. This is then exploited to manipulate parties’ behaviours to the Phisher's advantage. There needs to be some way of identifying those that belong to the community as opposed to those who wish to exploit the community.
So, from the above ramblings, it seems that trust in an online community needs to be considered at a number of levels, in terms of: perceived accountability; liability for violation; and what it means to be a responsible member of a trusted community. How can we meet all of these goals simultaneously?
What is trust in the world of business really?
Hello everyone! I've been reading through the discussion archive these last few days and I was really impressed with both the quantity and the quality and in-depth analysis of the posts. I think it is really great that everybody here is trying to think practically in a sphere that still has very little practice.
One question kept nagging me, though. We are talking about building online trust, about bringing people closer together in terms of communication by creating guidelines, something like a scene from a sci-fi movie where the space alien takes out a communicator that listens to human speech and downloads it into the ET's head. But, even when we speak the same language, we only think we do, as there are volumes of thought and culture behind every word we speak, behind every metaphore and pun, expression and punctuation even, if anybody can remember "Eats, shoots, and leaves".
I don't know if I'm going to be accused of being way too cynical, but I'm not a follower of Francis Fukuyama in believing that we are living after the end of history. In fact, I am more Morgenthau-ean, and I do not believe that we are living in a world full of people that want to be friends. We are living in a world of conflict, where interests govern policies and decisions, and it is rarely the issue of trust, in the sense of personal trust, believing in the purity of the other side's motives, that comes out in considering business decisions. I noticed that Ebay came up in a lot of the discussions, as an example of very clear guidelines and smooth operating system. One of the very clear distinguishing characteristics of Ebay that my professor of International Negotiation brought up was, there is no lasting business relationship under question when you buy something from Ebay. True, there is the mechanism for feedback, but more often than not, no side cares what the other side thinks or feels, so there are no trust issues in my opinion.
That being said, I do believe that there are a lot of issues of Internet culture and communication in the business world that merit discussion. In that sense I do not see trust as a consequence of transparency and guidelines or rules, but as a result of intelligent and open communication that seeks resolution to a problem. I believe that softwares that facilitate internet negotation need to be worked on. I'm thinking about something in lines of a controlled environment where people can choose different chat options, file sharing, multi-party discussion, financial information, online banking options, etc.
Thank you very much for reading, I hope I didn't make anybody angry, and I'm hungry for feedback!
Diliana
Reply to Diliana
"I noticed that Ebay came up in a lot of the discussions, as an example of very clear guidelines and smooth operating system. One of the very clear distinguishing characteristics of Ebay that my professor of International Negotiation brought up was, there is no lasting business relationship under question when you buy something from Ebay. True, there is the mechanism for feedback, but more often than not, no side cares what the other side thinks or feels, so there are no trust issues in my opinion."
I respectfully disagree with that assertion. As someone who had a 100% positive feedback rating on Ebay ruined by retaliatory feedback, I can attest to the importance of that system in doing business. Before I bought anything on Ebay, I would check the ratings in order to weigh the risks. I was once burned by a seller, couldn't work things out, and then left negative feedback. The seller in turn left feedback for me! Ebay would not delete the retaliatory feedback so I stopped doing business on Ebay and use Livedeal instead. MY trust in Ebay was shattered when I saw how easy it was to abuse the system with impunity. If people didn't care about their feedback ratings, you would definitely see more fraud.
jd2b
Online Justice Systems
What does everyone think about the feasibility of replicating a restorative (as opposed to retributive) justice system in the virtual world? I'm thinking of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa spearheaded by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I'm finding it difficult to imagine that process being as powerful online or even possible. Important component of the justice/healing was the public confession and the public & immeditely publicized interaction between victim/victim's family and aggressor. Would online confessions carry the same emotional weight. Does it take the same courage to write to someone telling how you have transgressed against them v speaking to them face to face. Also was wondering - does the International Criminal Court have an online component?
re:online justice systems
Hi shunter,
I agree that restorative justice needs to be done F2F. There needs to be some kind of emotional component and the paticipants' emotions emerge into one as they go through the process.
But we don't restrict ourselves to pure online situation.
How about using the teleconference system or webcams? Will the online F2F situation be similar to the actual F2F situation?
Retributive model best for deterrence
Hi Shunter and Mogino,
I studied the restorative model in my International Human Rights class with Professor Penny Andrews, who was the first woman of color on the short list for consideration to sit on the South African Supreme Court. Restorative justice has been amazingly healing for the parties, but retribution is still the best model for deterrence.
The internet lends itself well to the free market economy with its arms length transactions. However, this is not conducive to trust, emotions, or healing associated with restorative justice. Retribution works well online because it adds an element of risk to weigh against the benefits of wrongdoing. Just think - total ban from the internet could be the new death penalty.
jd2b
rationality and trust
According to public choice theory developed by economists, all rational people are interest based, they choose whatever suits best to their interests. Business societies and academia came to conclusion that it is rational to run trustworthy business rather than untrustworthy. Most of the big businesses developed their brands or image, so that consumer could recognize them as trusworthy. Nowadays just the names of trustworthy companies cost huge amount of money. In Competing for supply side of the market, bisenesses tend to be better service suppliers and more trustworthy than their competitors, this is happening in cyber world too, there are businesses like amazon, eBay, many local retail businesses have their brand names and developed their own ODR systems. This reputation thing is the best cyber social control. Here consumer side plays its part too. If consumers have enough education and information about how to find trusworthy site or community, the communities without reputation or poor transparency and security will not have success, eventually if they are rational they will have to gain reputation by making their community accountable, responsible, secure and transparent. We have so many proposals offered in this forum, so why not to start an educational campaign for various types of community members by offering model laws and regulations, encouraging businesses to join in united groups so that regulations could be enforced, make advertisements and forums on how to make successful business in net, how to find trustworthy shopping sites, etc. It is like civil movement that changed the real world, it might be "cyber movement for trusworthy cyber world". I can say that this movement has already started in the forums like this, at least this contest have sponsors who are interested in "trust", that means resorces. These resorces could be used to create a governing community , the members of which would have an obligation to enforce the reguations adopted by the community.
What I want to say here is that netizens must be informed about the need of trustworthy communities, and as usually demand side decides what product they need, they should be persuaded that they need "trust" thru education.
on the trustworthy online community
On the trustworthy online community
We know that the world is comprised of a variety of nations and cultures, what is a trustworthy online community just as what is a trustworthy community, which should be having different understanding and practices by different nations and cultures so far.
A trustworthy Community on line should are based on a lot of factors, first of all,
Who is the online Community’s master? Governments, International Organization, or Netcitizens? Who do make laws and morals for the community? Or who can represent us to make laws and morals? Who do carry out laws and morals practice for the community?
Secondly, What are legitimate targeted matters we should accept? What is truth and trust we can implement? What is goodness and what are bad behaviors on line our online morals need to lead or regulate? What is the division between crime and condemned actions?
What are the relationships between states/International Organizations and online community? What are the relationships of politics, religions, beliefs, customs, racial problems as well as economy and our online community? In other words, what are the objects for setting up a trustworthy online community we need to set up or regulate? What are the features of the online community we should be followed?
Thirdly, What are our remedies for the online community? International remedy or national remedy or mixed way? Who to come to carry out these remedies? By what can we carry out these remedies? If possible, how to protect free speech, human rights in my online community? What is regional problem that should apply for the local laws and morals, what is international problem that should be adjusted by International Legislation?
Whether do the people of the online community need the same morals and laws for a trusted society?
Whether can an online society among different morals and laws form a trusted online community? If we can do it, how can we implement them?
If not, how to transfer a generally received moral standard into a practical laws in online?
All above problems should be some basic principals for us to buildup a trustworthy online community, which we should reach a kind of agreements. And then we may be able to begin talking about how to set a trustworthy online community up in detail.
ADR and ODR
Here is a summary of some research I have been working on for my ADR class:
By comparing the current ADR and ODR system, I synthesized some commonalities and differences. By analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of each system, I created some new ideas to further and streamline the use of alternative dispute resolution in both online and face-to-face contexts.
First, I explored the general purposes of ADR and how they fit into the ODR context. Steven B. Goldberg highlights some purposes and justifications for ADR in his Dispute Resolution casebook. His ideas come from the 1976 Pound Conference and are stated as follows:
• To lower court caseloads and expenses,
• To reduce the parties’ expenses and time,
• To provide speedy settlement of those disputes that were disruptive of the community or the lives of the parties’ families,
• To improve public satisfaction with the justice system,
• To encourage resolutions that were suited to the parties’ needs,
• To increase voluntary compliance with resolutions,
• To restore the influence of neighborhood and community values and the cohesiveness of communities,
• To provide accessible forums to people with disputes, and
• To teach the public to try more effective processes than violence or litigation for settling disputes.
.
Fundamentally, ADR lowers court caseloads and expenses. In the ODR context, this point is of great importance. The internet has spawned countless conflicts in almost every area of the law. Because the internet is both virtual and world-wide, jurisdiction and venue issues can often slow down or even thwart the justice system. For example, Wikimania asks us to think about the following senario:
Consider a Web site selling pornographic materials set up in Hong Kong, hosted in the Caribbean, with a Web master residing in the Netherlands and owners who are British nationals, and broadcast throughout the world? If a complaint for pornography were to be filed, whom do you sue and where do you sue them? (Wikibooks 2003, update 2006)
Conflict of law, venue, and jurisdiction are all problems in this case. If, however, the business first creates its own choice of law through contract with the consumer, the choice of law issue is resolved. That still leaves the problem of venue. If the parties are separated by oceans, where is a convenient forum? In the spirit of fairness, ODR is the best solution. In the case at hand, the conflict arose online. Thus, all parties are familiar with the technology necessary for ODR. Furthermore, by “Fitting the Forum to the Fuss” all parties are more likely to reach a mutually acceptable agreement.
Expense is another issue raised by internet disputes. If, for example, in the above scenario, the contract dictated the appropriate venue for the court proceeding. The parties would then have to travel from their respective countries to try the case. If the amount in controversy is very large, this might be inconvenient but acceptable. If the amount is minimal, the cost of travel and time off work may outweigh the benefit of litigation leaving the party with no resolution. Even if the contract requires arbitration or another form of ADR, physical barriers may keep the parties from achieving resolution.
As with traditional ADR, ODR carries some of the same criticisms. Online arbitration can advantage repeat players, violate due process rights, thwart precedent, and carry unfair filing fees. Online arbitration agreements, like traditional arbitration agreements, can sometimes violate the consumers rights or be invalidated by courts as unconscionable. By making the proceedings as fair as possible, the arbitration is less likely to be invalidated.
Goldberg also points out that ADR provides a speedy solution to disputes. This may be ODR’s greatest advantage over other forms of dispute resolution. As pointed out above, current ODR systems can minimize the time needed to reach a solution. Negotiations that may take weeks in face-to-face sessions can take minutes using Cybersettle. Litigation that could take months or even years can be resolved in weeks through SquareTrade or similar websites. As technologies advance, the speed of dispute resolution increases. Brainstorming and other communication devises key to mediation can be accomplished more quickly and efficiently through internet technology.
The parties themselves create the only downfall with respect to speediness in ODR. A common complaint among user of ODR is a failure of the opposition to respond. The opposing party may ignore the notification sent by the ODR company. In systems such as eBay that have consumer feedback protections, the opposition is motivated to answer complaints by fear of negative reviews. Unfortunately, the parties can avoid the suit by not answering the complaint.
Goldberg next highlights the importance of improving the public satisfaction with the justice system. Through my participation in the IBC, I have come to realize the importance of trust to the continuation and development of the internet economy. Consumers are more likely to trust a site if they know they have means to resolve any conflict that may arise from their transactions. The biggest complaints I hear from friends and family concerning internet shopping is (a) it is not safe and (b) you never know what you are going to get. By implementing ODR systems into commercial websites, the internet can become a self-regulating entity—safe and convenient for shoppers all over the world
2. Comparisons
My next topic of exploration involved comparing ADR and ODR to develop solutions to problems with both systems. The most obvious difference involves face-to-face versus virtual communication. Most ODR procedures—especially those that arise out of online activity—are conducted completely online and the parties will never meet. This leads to both advantages and disadvantages. Advantages include the ability to separate emotions from the issues in dispute. Although anger is certainly capable of being communicated online, parties tend choose their words more carefully when it appears in writing. In the context of mediation, parties may find common ground more easily by leaving emotions outside. Furthermore, mediators may have an easier time controlling the parties communication without the emotional aspect. In negotiation sessions, the absence of emotions is often an advantage to both parties. It can alleviate trickery and other tactics that can interfere with both fairness and efficiency. Online family mediations and negotiations can benefit greatly by the unemotional quality of ODR. It often easies the tension between the parties and allows for more efficient communication. Online arbitration is affected the least by the hindrance of emotion because the process is more formal than other forms of ADR.
The flip side of this occurs from miscommunication. Because of the loss of body language and other sensory communication, emotions are hard to read. Voice inflection and facial expressions often say more than the words themselves. The lack of face-to-face communication eliminates a large spectrum of non-verbal speech. What one party intended to be humorous can come across as serious or even offensive in written form.
Another advantage to eliminating face-to-face communication is its ability to level the playing field both physically and emotionally. Gender, age, race, and economic status disparities are diminished greatly by ODR. Intellect and writing ability may still cause an imbalance of bargaining power, but that is difficult to eradicate in any context. One of the functions of a facilitator in either ADR or ODR is to overcome the imbalance to reach an agreement that is achieved fairly by the parties themselves.
ODR also has some characteristics unique to the online world. Because of the anonymous nature of the internet, many parties hide, falsify, or manipulate their identities. This creates a unique problem concerning trust. Unlike ADR which deals with personal interaction, anonymity may allow less accountability in the world of online communication. Because parties are unable to interact face-to-face, the natural intuitions that build trust in personal relationships are often lacing.
Another unique characteristic of ODR arises from the multiple cultures utilizing the internet. The internet brings people all over the world together, but interactions through socialization and commerce naturally cause conflicts. To further the difficulties that arise for the conflicts, what may be interpreted as good intentioned in American society could be a sign of disrespect in a distant culture. The importance of facilitating trust becomes even greater in the international forum.
3. Solutions
By improving the level of trust achievable in ODR, we can improve the online community not only commercially, but also socially. A good place to start would be by developing a system of rules and standards that govern the internet community enforceable by contract. By using a site or network, the user will agree to abide by a set of rules. If the user breaks a rule, then the case goes to the ODR procedure specified in the contract.
We should focus the rule system on standards of universal ethics and good faith. Developing a universal code of rules or ethics will be a difficult process involving the world-wide community. Creating a system of rules will be difficult, but not impossible. The United Nations already has a forum for international property disputes. As the online community develops, the commonalities of all cultures become illuminated.
We could also improve the current system by training mediators to utilize the advantages of ODR. Although a facilitator may find some disadvantages because of the communication deficiencies, education could teach ODR mediators to use those communication barriers to their advantage. Because the mediator can control what information is sent to the parties, the mediator could continually caucus in an attempt to advance and improve the level of productive communication between the parties. Misunderstandings could be greatly reduced or avoided by developing ground rules before the session begins. A system of emoticons could help the parties convey their true meanings or emotions more clearly than text alone. Although emoticons are more appropriate for less formal ODR sessions, emotions are not a reoccurring problem in business-to-business ODR sessions. With regard to efficiency, the academic and legal communities need to partner with the technological community. The results of similar coalitions thus far have created many of the great new ODR mechanisms. The next step seems to be to incorporate optional audio and video-conferencing with textual ODR. With regard to speed and the problem of unresponsive opponents, we could add default judgment clauses into contractual agreements for ODR.
Next, we should improve and expand the current ODR system. Because lightening court caseloads and lowering expense are some the greatest positives of ADR and ODR, the system should streamline these advantages. By utilizing ODR to resolve offline conflicts, court dockets would decrease and ODR would gain public approval. Because low-price mechanisms like SquareTrade are available to the public, low-value disputes served more efficiently by ODR. Maybe mandatory mediation systems like West Virginia’s could offer ODR as an alternative to face-to-face mediations. Promoting public satisfaction with the legal system goes hand in hand with building trust. Online companies can do several things to build online trust. First of all, I noticed that when I discussed this project with friends, family, and fellow members of the legal community, not one had ever heard of ODR. In fact, my mother was currently having a dispute over an eBay order and asked my advice. I, of course, told her about SquareTrade. One way to correct this problem would be through advertising. The internet itself is a great place to spread ideas about new technology. Sites like SquareTrade could expand their market simply by making themselves known to the online community. Furthermore, many websites advertise on television. Consumers may be more likely to purchase from a website if they knew the site had built in dispute resolution mechanisms.
Through developments and education, ODR can be used to promote dispute resolution throughout the world. As ADR has helped society work out its problems, ODR can do the same to bring all societies together. By developing a network of online ethics and rules, we can set precedent for world leaders. Countries such as India are already adopting ODR as an official dispute resolution mechanism. ODR could be used to bring justice and empowerment to rural communities and to reform flawed justice systems already inexistence. In a world with so many cultural differences, we need as many peacemaking mechanisms as we can get.
Any comments or suggestions for further study?
arbitration clauses
Thank you for the informative post, khartung!
One big issue that must be resolved is how to encourage both parties to arbitrate. A culpable person may avoid arbitration, but the threat of litigatrion or civil penalties may compel compliance. Anonymity will provide a cloak of impunity, so first we must hold ISP's liable for their anonymous users' harms so that they will have an incentive to require registration under a real ID. Once a culpable person realizes that he or she is traceable, this will deter much wrongdoing while giving a means to regulate the rest. If ISP's, software and hardware companies band together and place mandatory arbitration clauses in their Eula's and shrinkwrap agreements - not just for disputes against the company, but when other users bring forth charges against that user - then that will lead to an effective ODR system as long as it is regulated by a third neutral party staffed by lawyers with mediation/arbitration experience and possibly psychologists or other trained counselors.
This leads to a second big issue: how do we prevent frivolous claims? If arbitration is more or less mandatory, how do we protect innocent parties from being harassed by a serial disputor? What will be the threshold in order to establish a claim?
A third issue is the cost. Can online ad revenue alone foot the bill? Should consumers pay to have a claim resolved? Should an ODR surcharge be placed on soft/ hard ware? Webhosting? Online sales?
jd2b
How should we establish personal trust on the Internet?
Trying to answer this question, the first word came into my mind is "Sacrifice" first.
I believe that everyone is willing to trust others, while there are some obstacles in 100% practicing our trust, which is the risk of hurt by others. If all of us hold the same oppinion ,then it is hard to build such trust community online.
I remember our first class began with a game similary of Prisoner' dilemma, the only difference is that we can play the cards for many rounds, so we have opportunity to discuss with each other the stragedy. Just as what stands behind the game, it is hard to force everybody to fullfill their promise and there's always someone "cheating" and winning on other's honesty.
So I decided not to cheat myself and being cheated for the first several rounds, as long as there are somebody always be honest, others will follow up. May in the fourth or fifth round, finally, everybody showed the same cards.
I guess it is the same in building up an online community, if somebody keep to be honest even cheating by others for the first several times, then later more and more people will follow his footprint. The problem is , we do not know how long will this last, for in our game we only had four people, and in a large community, this method may take longer time to work. But I hope that everybody can do his best in trusting others
To be short, I believe "being honest first" is one the method of establishing such trust relationship on the Internet.
Re: How should we establish personal trust on the Internet?
Iris, thank you for sharing your ideas and I agree that "being honest first" is the basic way to establish trust. In technical way, timely response, frequent communication, and cautious choices of words are crucial.
The brotherhood, trust and distrust
First of all, our offline real society is still filled with distrust, although we sometimes are familiar with our counterparts, let alone the alien online community. I do not expect to establish a wholly trustworthy online society. However, I do think there are several ways to improve the credibility of online community.
When we went online, we tend to choose the attitudes of not to believe the strangers. Usually when I chat online, I will talk to my classmates, friends and parents. Rarely do I communicate with strangers, even if sometimes I do, I will first inform myself, this is the person I’m unfamiliar with, and I will not express my true feelings. Distrust means prudent. If you do not render me convincible information, how could you induce me to trust you?
So the main task of the online community is to convert the distrust of newcomers to the trust in the community. Before we clarify the definition of trust, we should first distinguish the purpose of our online community. What are we asking for, a business trust or a personal trust? Sometimes we just need business trust. The producer just needs to convince the customer that My product is trustworthy in certain aspects. Although we are unfamiliar with whom the producer is, we would choose to take the offer according to the quality of the product. However, if the online community provides consulting service instead of products sales, the problem would be more sophisticated. Will you keep my secret confidential? Will you represent me in my interest? These questions are very difficult to answer in the online community. Moreover, if in an online dating community, with a throng of unknowns who name themselves nonsense nicknames and unclear identification, would you like to really have a date with one of them? At this time we need to establish a personal trust, however, because people are prudent, the personal trust is much more difficult to initiate. In certain circumstances, if business trust would satisfy the community, we do not bother to construct a personal trust.
After we have defined our purpose, we want to know what the trust represents. It usually refers to a judgment that one can rely on another party’s word or promise at the risk of a bad outcome should the other cheat or renege. (Deutsch, Luhmann, Coleman, Hardin, Dasgupta, Luhmann,Gambetta) When we decide to trust sb, we start to take a risk. For some risk lovers, they really do not care about whom they are dating with online; however, the majority of the society are risk aversion, which means they will ask for a discount of price (more economic benefit) to cover their risk. If the expected rate of return is higher than the expected risk, the customer would like to make the choice to trust, or vice versa.
Basically, I have thought of some basic ideas to help construct a trustworthy society.
First, we need both arbitrators and administrators in the online community. On the one hand, feedback from past customers would help distinguish the trustworthy companies, and on the other hand, we need the administrators who would take the responsibility of supervise the behavior of the member of the community. Once the members have broken the rule of trust, they would be kicked out of the circle.
Second, if the online community share a close relationship with the offline entity, it would be better to cope with. We have already quite familiar with the rules of offline society. Through the links, we will find more comfortable to collaborate with the online circle.
Besides, the online community also has his advantage. With internet, we can find piles of information to help you make a decision whether or not you have to trust sb. in certain aspects. If you google a lawyer, you will soon not only know when he was born, how he did in his university and also his past experience. You will have a better chance to identify a person, and the only thing you need to do is to get his true name instead of some useless nickname.
Furthermore, with the development of technology, if we can see people online, it would make the online communication more like the offline communication. If we know who we are talking to, the members would feel more secure since we get to know each other.
There are more problems to consider about. For example, does the community have to be international or global related? Well, it depends. If you choose English as the official language of the online community, you will face more cross-cultural problems. However, if you choose Chinese or Japanese as an official language, problems are much easier.
re: The brotherhood,trust and distrust
HI,aliciaren, I strongly agree with your oppinion on distinguish two kinds of online community.
One is based on the reality, your friends, family and classmates, or bussiness partners we have already met and aquiantance with, so we just change the circumstances to an online one,which is we have the community first , and then taking the advantage of technology.
And the other is a totally strange community which has little real foundation,which is , we have the technologic possibility first, then we creat.
After clearing this, we know that now we are mainly dealing with the second kind, right?
Common interest communities
Hi Iris & aliciaren,
Where would common interest communities fall into your characterizations? Many people join online groups based on their interest, such as martial arts. Even though group members may start off as strangers, there is a genuine sense of bonding and open sharing of ideas that leads to real relationships. I often meet my online buddies at kung fu tournaments and we feel we've known each other forever. I imagine online support groups foster even more close friendships.
Common interest communities tend to bring people together from all over the world and friendships are more instantaneous than a F2F encounter. I like the way Yahoo groups are set up. Yahoo has its own terms and rules of use while each group's moderator posts rules pertaining to that particular group. Moderators can remove offensive posts or members, or pre-approve them. The pre-approval option prevents spammers from hijacking a group. Even if a group is infiltrated by someone with bad intentions, the special interest communities are adept at weeding these individuals out through castigation, shaming, or ignoring.
The last option works amazingly well. Research in psychology has taught us that the fastest way to extinguish an unwanted behavior is through punishment. However, for those who are seeking negative attention, castigation or shaming may actually reward the behavior. Therefore, ignoring the instigator removes the reward and will extinguish the unwanted behavior.
While moderators are the first line of defense against inappropriate behaviors by a group member, they are not trained in dispute resolution techniques. Perhaps this is a service Yahoo might want to think about giving to moderators before they are allowed the webspace to host a group. Yahoo could contract with ODR experts to set up interactive training software that all moderators must pass before setting up a group. Then moderators could have access to professional ODR's for consultations as needed, and serious problems could be referred entirely to ODR. Yahoo already garners tremendous ad revenue from these free online groups, and the recent flood of litigation against Google may spur Yahoo to be more proactive.
jd2b
RE:Common interest communities
Hi, jd2b
Good point, and I have to admit our characterizations may have problems. But maybe essentially, I consider the common interest communities are more similar to the first one, which is you already had a contour of the circle first. People share the same interest may interact each other as a big family, using words and patterns only understandable among members and difficult for outsiders to catch the point.
And concerning the same interest of bussiness, it is good for us to consider that as the first pattern, which may help us overcome some trust and communication obstacles if we regard people who have the common bussiness interest as one who had already have certain tie to us, no matter how weak it is, and just put them into an online context. I am not sure but maybe for now, most of bussiness communities(especially big deals) still need reality support,say, they have to meet each other and sign the contract.
In that case, I think it is better to characterize our online community as either need a reality support or 100% online, and the common interest community can be either one , depending on how invovled of the personal intersts. I guess when it comes to big matters, we still need to meet each other, like serious bussiness, online community's role in that case is just to improve the communication efficiency
arms length dealings
Hi Iris,
In a free market economy like the US, the internet lends itself well to big business transactions. It can open the field to smaller players and diminsh bias. However, it does lack the human element you described as reality support. On the other hand, since personal bias can be virtually eliminated through the use of neutral online ID's, common interest groups can facilitate stronger bonds among different cultures and groups than a typical F2F meeting. Another thing to think about is that those who are shunned by their peers or society due to physical or perceived differences can flourish online. The internet in many respects levels the playing field.
jd2b
RE: arms length dealings
Hi, jd2b, I understand your meaning, and in fact, in modern china, the government does not involve into the bussiness quite often as many people think. And I still do not clear enough about the fact: it is true that interenet lends itself well to big business transactions, but in the US, is it possible to make big bussiness decision without a F2F meeting?
BTW, I strongly agree with you about the function of elimination of bias which is common in real world. Yet this is not conflict with my notion because I thought that as long as it does not involve personal interests, online community has many advantages as you examplified. You do not need much support from reality if it is just for entertainment or discussion.
A good example is this website and the contest itself. For participation of discussion, you do not need any support from reality, maybe only registered for a username and then we can discuss together. But as the contests develope further, the holder need your certification, "either (a) enrollment in an undergraduate/graduate program or equivalent in Law, Dispute Resolution, Conflict Resolution..."
I guess I made my point clear, as long as it is still discussion, no matter how important or significant the contents maybe(ethnic matter, culture matter...), we do not need support from reality because of no personal interests invovled. If we want to further participate in the contest, which may have personal interest consideration, say, then support from reality is needed.
Common Ground
I think that common interest is the foundation for an online community, especially when it is more than likely a gathering of "strangers" per say. Like some of the examples already used above if people have a purpose when they are together then they already have something in common, and that common ground is where we begin to build a relationship and in the building of that relationship trust will develop. As I was reading Iris, jb2b, and aliciaren's illustrations above I had this picture of a group of strangers standing in a room where each one had no particular reason to be there other than they all managed to be there by chance. Then I thought of a group of strangers standing in a room where they all had the same purpose to be there, and all knew they had the same purpose of being there. And I'm sure most of us would agree conversation would flow much more automatically and fluidly with the second set of strangers. My point... purpose. Purpose gives something a point!
Purpose as a point
Angelina,
You hit the nail on the head by your example! Purpose facilitates social (and business) transactions rather than random meetings. Common interest communities serve that purpose from which all else flows.
Iris,
I reallize China is entering the free market economy, but I think it will be a while (if ever) of embracing cold, impersonal business transactions as seen in the west. One thing that I find interesting about Chinese interactions is the notion of an introduction letter. I understand this is used for business and social introductions. For example, kung fu masters here in the US will give letters of introduction to their students traveling in China so that they have access to the traditional masters who generally do not teach foreigners. One French student who was a student of the late, great Wang Xuanjie had such a letter from him to take around the different Provinces and he reports being treated as an honored guest as soon as he produces the letter, even today so many years after his master's death. Here there is more open access, but transactions are much more impersonal. I heard that China is the world's largest user of the internet, but I'm not sure how big a role the internet plays in your business culture, so I would love to hear more from you about that!
jd2b
Re: Purpose as a point
Hi, jd2b, thanks so much that you are interesting into China. I am from Beijing and now study in Japan. I will try my best to explain as much as I can.
First of all, I agree with you about the judgement that it will be a while to change to the cold and impersonal business transactions style as your western world, for we still have to face the culture issue, or the social ties,if to make it more detail. The culture background is influencial in doing bussiness,and we are more inclined to believe relatives or aquaintance in choosing bussiness partners, rather than the real interests for both parties. About this, we share many similarities with Japan, that the interpersonal relationship plays an important role in bussiness and some local companies will set a side special money for social contacts(namely dinner, entertainment..), bussiness relationship must be reinforced through many other ways as well. Sometimes contracts are signed during dinners. I do not know wether it is traditional eastern way, but many Asian countries have the same style.
Yet I do not think we should judge it here, for of course it has both advantages and disadvantages, perhaps you can call the difference as tradition vs modern, or warm vs cold. Maybe it is more fair and efficient or rational to do bussiness in western ways, but we must have our reason has well, such as more human elements/concerns...
Based on this, maybe you can partly understand the introduction letter thing. But, I guess not only China, the US in some degree rely on it too, such as the recommendation letter. A good RL will increase your chance of being accepted by a top university , which reflects that you may share the same way as us too. They are both ways of dealing with unfamilarity, which we tend to trust people who have already had certain tie with us.
And so can this explain the use of internet in bussiness. It is hard for me now to outline how we take advantage of internet in doing bussiness. Yet the definite thing is, since the economic developement in China is unbalance, different places may have different styles. Cities usually depends more on that than coutryside, and southeastern said more than northwestern, young bussiness man more than the last generation.
As the case in Beijing, as far as I can see, completely relying on internet is not possible , at least for now. The beginning of a bussiness relationship and the conclusion period(such as signing the contracts) must require face to face meeting, for the reason of trust and respect, of course the latter is culture element . Internet can only play a role as faciliating of communication, for the concerning of time and money, it is not possible to discuss every issue F2F, so internet has its role here. I hope my information will be useful to you.
And is US the same? Hope you can tell us, too:)
Arms length dealings
Thanks you for your information Iris!
In the US we are exactly the opposite in our business transactions. We do not like to mix business with personal matters, so the more remote the buyer and seller are, the better. Our whole economy is based on this premise. We do not want dynasties where powerful families control everything by keeping business transactions close to home. We want a free market economy where people are crossing state lines to carry on commercial activities.
When strangers deal with strangers, this makes the market place open to all and keeps trade flowing to build up a strong society. Theoretically, we are a society based on equality where everyone should have the same chance to make the same transaction. If you have a system where family hires family or close friends in their buisness, you create a caste system that persists for generations. Many people immigrate to the US because we are seen as the land of equal opportunity where you can become rich from the sweat of your brow.
Of course that's only theoretical, because we do have problems with bias and discrimination, and there is a common saying "it's not what you know but who you know" because of the many back door deals that go on. From the beginning of our history, America has been the land of opportunity for young, white Christian males.
I have a friend who was the bodyguard of Malcom X back when he was in the Nation of Islam, and he has been educating me on matters of Black American history (since this was not taught in the public school system, and I wanted to learn as much as possible before entering law school). He characterizes our socioeconomic system as a Monopoly game, where Black Americans were finally allowed to sit in as players after all the property was bought and hotels erected. Black players have no choice but to pay the Whites or "Go Directly to Jail." (Apologies to those in this contest who are unfamiliar with the game of Monopoly).
There was a study released right before I came to law school which found that white felons (ex-offenders) were three times more likely to find a job in NYC than a Black male with no criminal history. Not that I condone discrimination against those whom have paid their debt to society, but there's something terribly wrong here!
What I like most about the internet is the elimination of bias. It offers a true "arms length" transaction. You have a buyer, a seller, and a transaction. Color, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, age, socioeconomic status, etc rarely interfere with this online transaction.
The problem, of course, is trust. How do we create trust when we are no longer relying on our social filters for the intuitive trust we have developed? How do we "feel" each other out when the internet is so cold and impersonal? While internet transactions solve a lot of social problems inherent in American society, it seems to present problems in Chinese society. Yet, I see much potential in the average Chinese private citizen now having the ability to go online and engage in international trade like on Ebay).
jd2b
Efficiency of taking advantage of existing social ties
Hi, jd2b, I really find this discussion more and more interesting now.
I have to admit that your style of doing bussiness has many advantages and is accordance with your principle of the foundation of the US. Although we have a strong culture background, but now are moving toward your direction and next year is Beijing Olympic, so I guess if you have a chance to come to Beijing and see what it is like. I have to say that there's still many biased oppinion about us these days so the best ways is finding out by yourself. In fact, as I traveled many places recent years, I found that the difference among many cultures or places are not so obvious as we thought. If you come to beijing, you may find the way people are doing bussiness may not be so different as yours, perhaps, for we have to keep pace with the main stream world in order to do bussiness.
I guess every countries face the problem of "back doors", regardless of each claim a different theory, wether it is equity or not, because it is human nature and runs in our blood, and is an extreme way of dealing with uncertainty. In your society, it appears through the way of discrimination(ethnical, sexual..), in our society, which has fewer discrimination problem, but essentially the same, because personal relationships still play a strong role in society, people are discriminated by the relative close relationships with the "powered" one.
The reason for taking advantages of social ties is efficiency. We have already built up a social net through generations or years of accumulation, which faciliate us with our bussiness because of familiarity(already built style and pattern, trust), so why should we discard it and move to a completely new and strange environment?I agree with you that internet can help to eliminate biase, yet at the cost of efficiency because of the issue of trust we are now discussing.
Perhaps it is not proper to summarize this dicussion as equity vs efficiency, I hope not, for it is a never-end debates...
efficiency of social ties
I enjoyed reading your post, Iris, and it was most enlightening!
My husband is from Liaoning, so we hope to take our daughters to China as soon as I pass the bar. Instead of the Olympics, I'd much rather see the kung fu tournament in Qingdao. I used to write for an American kung fu magazine and I must admit my success in getting so many interviews with reticent masters was due to the efficiency of my social ties. BTW, one of our professors just came back from Beijing helping the civil courts implement ADR, which is really exciting.
jd2b
hi, juilie as i logged in
hi, juilie
as i logged in from another place rather than my computer i noticed this post and obviously i missed it before...
it is really good idea to have your daugers at least partly have their education in china.
also good luck for your bar passing exam:)
welcome to beijing after your qingdao tournament, i will be back from japan next year too.
Qingdao
Maybe we can go out eating together when I go to China. It would be my pleasure to meet you face to face!
Julie
RE:Qingdao
Yes, do visit Beijing next year, I will be back in March or April and I will show you many places there, looking foward to meet you there:)
Emotional Intelligence
Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew.” It made me think if all participants in an online community were in problem-solving gear and had a high level of emotional intelligence (as in the capacity to perceive, assess and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others and of groups) then trust would naturally exist or more it would naturally evolve and come to be between all involved. Simple as that, eh? ;-) When people in a group, online or offline, consciously make the effort to shift their perspectives to see the situation from another’s point of view their behaviors and words become trust-inducing. Bit of a Catch 22 though as perhaps for most people the impulse to empathize and see things from another’s view point is strongest when they feel most secure and trusting to begin with. So they need to feel the trust in order to propagate it. Just some thoughts, apologies if they are a little scattered. Can emotional intelligence be taught or instilled in an online justice system?
Cultivating Emotional Intelligence
I agree with jd2b that emotional intelligence will progress once ones basic needs are met. I think that emotinal intelligence can be cultivated if given the right environment to grow. And again when reflecting on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and applying it to an online scenerio I think it would look like this. An individual first needs to have ones basic needs of food and shelter met so that they can participate in an online community. The online justice system then would be an environment where ones needs of security would be met and from their they could explore and develop their entrepreneurial desires and abilities. The objective would be giving everyone an equal opportunity to succeed and creating an environment that anyone and everyone can thrive in, where culture, location, circumstances, and class/status won't be what limits a person's success. The contributions that each member of society has to offer in regards to ideas of ingenuity that will make this world a better place is endless and the human potential still largely remains an untapped resource.
It has been great corresponding with you all. I wish you all the best, and will hopefully have the opportunity to carry on to the next round.
Sincerely, Angelina
human potential as untaped resource
I totally concur with your assessment, Angelina!
I think the internet could be used to identify scarcity of basic resources (such as food, water, and shelter) so that excesses may be redeployed. The first line of justice should be the human condition and ensuring basic needs are met around the globe. We should have a system of justice structured in accordance with Maslow's Heirarchy.
jd2b
Wise post
That's a great quote from Einstein, shunter!
I would think emotional intelligence is linked with Maslow's heirarchy (which was posted earlier). Only when basic needs are met can one become self-actualized, which I believe is the path to developing emotional intelligence. In other words, it's difficult to be reflective and self-assessing when one is in survival mode. However, once one has survived and overcome great obstacles, there is more profound opportunity for emotional growth.
jd2b
Second Life Terms of Service vs. Real Life Laws
Is it realistic to expect virtual world laws opt out of real world jurisdictional laws? Apparently not, according to Pennsylvania state judge:
"Judge rules against ‘one-sided’ TOS in Bragg lawsuit
Thu May 31, 2007 12:05pm PDT
By Eric Reuters
SECOND LIFE, May 31 (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that Linden Lab’s terms of service for Second Life residents are not legally binding, according to court papers filed on Wednesday...." - http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/05/31/judge-rules-against-one...
The judge found that Second Life's Terms of Service "constitute a 'contract of adhesion'" (see definition at http://dictionary.law.com/definition2.asp?selected=2325). The dispute was therefore accepted by the Pennsylvania court, not by following the arbitration process prescribed in Second Life's Terms of Service.
This suggests that it may be difficult to establish enforceable rules and regulations on the Internet that conflict with the laws of various legal jurisdictions in the real world. In order for Internet-based trust mechanisms, such as alternative dispute resolution (arbitration), to be effective, they likely need to be implemented as part of a broad framework that bridges the virtual and terrestrial worlds.
BTW, Second Life works on a feudal governance model; Linden Lab owns Second Life, Second Life land owners own virtual land purchased from Second Life. Each successive landlord has the right to establish their own terms of use for their virtual land. There are few if any mechanisms that support real democracy in Second Life. Given that the Second Life terms of service are considered to be too one-sided and therefore unfair, and that Second Life is based on a feudal governance model, is there a case to be made that Linden Lab has fiduciary duties to second life property owners?
To add complexity to the issue, avatars are used to represent terrestrial individuals in Second Life. Any account holder has one or more avatars "in-world". Avatars conduct business on behalf of their terrestrial account holder in Second Life. If avatars are discrete entities, much like a corporation (which is a person with special status in law), would it be reasonable to give avatars a unique set of rights, rules and regulations than their terrestrial account holders? In effect, an avatar could contract for a subset of the terms of service independently from the terrestrial account holders agreement. Would this be one way to effectively bridge the virtual - terrestrial jurisdictional issues?
There are several interesting legal web sites that address some of these issues. Recently, I also interviewed some lawyers in Second Life and Linden Lab management about related issues. There appears to be a great deal of ambiguity about governance issues in Second Life. I think even the fundamental question of whether Second Life is fundamentally different from any web site, portal, e-marketplace, or application is a fundamental question that needs to be addressed first.
I believe this has significant implications for our project "to create, on the Internet, a trusted and trusting community". I don't think it is possible to accomplish without first defining the nature of the community members and the dynamics of their interactions. I have always said that trust issues must be addressed from the relying party's perspective. We therefore have to begin by defining all Internet Community stakeholders and understanding their reliance profiles.
I would be interested to know your thoughts and perspectives on these issues.
Legal issues of Second Life's TOS
I'm not familiar with Second Life, but it sounds intriguing enough to schedule it in to my "To Do" List for next week. What in the TOS did the plaintiff find objectionable? In the general scheme of things, it seems good for on line consumers that the court found the TOS to be adhesion and thus unenforceable. The courts have often leaned the other way with EULA's and shrink wrap.
It's an interesting proposition that Avatars should be subjet to rules independant from their creators. It makes me think of how the law could evolve to accommodate clones and cyborgs later.
jd2b
Regulation vs. Self-Regulation
First of all thanks to Ed Rholl for his great insights on TrustMarks. I would like to point out that if TrustMarks, or any other trust enhancing mechanisms indeed, are not complemented with efficient tools to guarantee the respect (and enforcement) of their standards, they might end up by delivering the opposite effect, disappointing the online community. A way to assure certain standards will be through regulation, but an over-regulation could hinder industry development. Furthermore, which type of regulation? Patchy state regulation? International regulation? That could be theoretically ideal, but which entity have the legitimacy to do so? The UN?
Secondly, I thought that it was fascinating the news about Second Life shared by TrustEnabler. In fact, I was surprised that an American judge found the arbitration clause unenforceable. By contrast, I wouldn’t be so surprise if the same thing would have happened in the EU; we actually have a law (Unfair Terms Directive) that makes any B2C arbitration clause unenforceable when imposed to consumers before the dispute arises. This was one of the main issues that broke the negotiations between the EU and the US at the Hague Conference. The problem is how can we develop universal rules if we have such different views and laws? Self-regulation is working on that, but enforcement might be one of its weakest points.
TOS as law
Hi Pablo,
You've raised some very valid concerns about which rule of law should apply to international internet disputes, and I propose that the answer should lie within the Terms of Service agreement put forth by the ISP. Now that ISP's have been subjected to a flood of litigation, it is in their best interest to self-regulate as well as regulate their users. They must also craft TOS's which will be judiciously upheld by most countries.
Of course TOS can't be the sole rule of law, so I propose that should ODR fail to resolve the issue, individuals should be subject to the laws of the country where they are physically accessing the internet. Where the two users' countries' laws are in conflict, then treaties should govern. Where there are novel questions of law, ODR should decide the issue, and then try to get it incorporated into a treaty.
jd2b
Maslow's heirarchy observations
I just finished my 1L finals so I have not had a chance to respond to many of the comments I have been reading. I know the comments I am about to make may be unpopular but I have thought them out over the past 2 weeks. There has been a lot of talk about Maslow's heirarchy of needs and as hard as I try, I can not apply them to what is being attempted through this contest. Allow me to expand. I fully apprecitate Maslow's ideas and believe they are fully valid and important points. I firmly believe that if we constrain ourselves to traditional models of human development, we will fail to introduce truly unique solutions to new problems. The reason I question the application of Maslow to our goals in this light is that I believe when we move to online needs, we move out of any traditional models of development. I am now in law school but i have been in internet development for over 13 years now and have seen online needs change dramatically. Originally people just wanted an online presence. People were happy just to see a brave new world on their computer. Now, peoples expectations have changed. Their needs have changed. There are constantly changing structures on the web and some people are in the frontlines of such movements and some people are riding the coat-tails. Either way, standars have changed and new needs models must be established. I have not failed to consider the numberous populations that are still struggling to fulfill the basic levels of Maslow's needs chart, I do however suggest that because those needs are based on a physical world, they cannot be strictly interpreted and applied to radical new online communites. A new systematic and thourough adaptation of Maslows needs should be developed to understand what brings people online and what they really seek to achieve. Only when thinking of virtual and dynamic needs models can we address the issue of online communites and establishing trust. I know many will disagree and I may have missed the point but I hope that all of the dialogue that has taken place during this contest will help to achieve a solid solution and a new opportunity for ODR and decreased barriers to justice. Thank you all.