RELATIONSHIP TECH

One of chief chores in the network economy…

…is to restore the symmetry of knowledge.

For trust to bloom, customers need to know who knows about them, and the full details of what they know. They have to have knowledge about the knower equal to what the knower knows about them. I would be a lot more comfortable with what the credit companies knew about me if I knew with great accuracy what they knew about me, how they know it, and who else they told. And I’d be even more at ease if I derived some compensation for the value they get for knowing about me.

Personally, I’m happy for anyone to track all my activities 24 hours a day, as long as I have a full account of where that information goes and I get paid for it. If I know who the watchers are, and they establish a relationship with me (in cash, discounts, useful information, or superior service, or otherwise), then that symmetry becomes an asset to me and to them.