Respect your authority
Posted: November 16th, 2009 | Author: azeem | Filed under: Corporate, Product | 1 Comment »Clay wrote compellingly about the notion of ‘algorithmic authority’, the idea that:
it takes in material from multiple sources, which sources themselves are not universally vetted for their trustworthiness, and it combines those sources in a way that doesn’t rely on any human manager to sign off on the results before they are published.
Some form of algorithmic authority or third party-authority measures is increasingly vital online. When networks become to big for any peer connecting to them to have first hand knowledge of the person they are transacting with (or taking information from).
This is why Dun & Bradstreet exists. Or Moody’s. Or S&P. Or the Morngingstar Equity Analyst ratings. It is what made Google’s PageRank work.
However, in the world if digital networks we have had to rely on rough proxies. Perhaps what someone says on Linked In; or more likely who they know on LinkedIn; or by doing a big of Google stalking. In all these cases, the onus was on you–the person doing the due diligence. And the cost was high: one could hardly expect to spend 90 seconds to filter everyone person you come across on a twitter stream.