Commentary on Tim Berners-Lee’s “Weaving the Web”

Matthew Salazar

bigmatt@stanford.edu

One of the last issues brought up in the discussion of “Weaving the Web” concerned “Webs of Trust.” This I thought was the most interesting concept we’d discussed regarding the World Wide Web. This was an issue brought up rather at length in the book I choose for my own review (“Smart Mobs” by Howard Rheingold). The issue of who can we trust has broad implications for “face-less” communications. In Smart Mobs, Rheingold advocated a structured form of “reputation” similar to what eBay is currently using. Of course, his application was rather limited and always tied to a specific goal.

If I understand it correctly, Berners-Lee seems to advocate a much broader approach. A sort of “gnutella” of trust credentials that spreads semi-anonymously between “trust links” of various parties. If I trust Bob, and Bob trusts Sears, and Sears trusts Maytag then I trust Maytag… though I may never know the “route of trust” between us.

This seems problematic on many levels, the greatest of which is simple abuse of the system. It must necessarily be easy to form these “trust links” for the system to be workable, but that makes all sorts of corruption possible. As we’ve discussed several times, the degrees of separation tend to be so small that any unscrupulous individual could easily bribe, coax or manipulate enough people to generate a “trustworthy” rating. There is evidence already of this phenomenon on eBay.

So the question that is begged (and which merits discussion) is, “What can we do?” Well, it can be argued that loose structures are already developing. Out of the chaos that is the web, different groups have rallied around a certain degrees of self-regulation: a sort of virtual chamber of commerce. Still, it remains a pretty difficult to say prior to any dealings whether or not one trusts another.

But is this so different from real life? I’m not so sure. While we all have friendly networks we can ask for advice about “others” but often, we are left to make decisions without any resources to consult. If for example, you are new in town and need a mechanic, what do you do? You take a chance. You might get burned or you might be pleased, either way you don’t wait around for somebody to give you an insight.