Trust, Friends and Connected Threads

Many of my friends recently gathered in Florence and I have been following their conversations via their blog and flickr. This one snippet triggered my thoughts about a different kind of trust I see in networks of bloggers and blog readers:

Summary of the Conversation about changes of conversation: "Patricia: topic of blogs is nebulous for me. Have had many of these conversations with John and Bev, but I’m still doubtful. I find it difficult in this conversation. Language is one barrier. (Perhaps we continue in German tomorrow?) In this blog discussion I see a question of trust. I need to know with whom I’m taking. That’ the opposite of the blogger’s attitude. Whoever is reading it is problematic. It’s too anonymous. Trust is missing. Can’t solve it right now. Want to get to the restaurant."

I went on to comment (and as of the moment, my comment is in the moderation queue):

Hey friends,

I just have to share this. I’m sitting in Shawn Callahan’s house, he is on a plane from Sydney to Melbourne after leaving you. I just showed the flickr picture to his family (and we laughed and were a bit jealous). So look at that bit of straddling.

I am also preparing for the workshops and presentations I’ll be doing here in Australia and have been jotting down snippets from your session notes that amplify the ideas and topics I’m planning. So in a way, I’m porting your conversational artefacts to yet another setting.

The trust issue, Patricia, is very salient. I was talking a few weeks ago with John and Etienne about a different kind of trust I see in network systems, like blog networks, and I think there is a very strong informational trust. Not that I have to get to know you to trust you ,but I have to get to know what you write about and how you write about it to trust you. But it is a different sort of trust. Not so much about personal identity, but domain related identity. Does that make any sense?

I shall be crediting all of you in my work here over the next 3.5 weeks!

Now I posted the above on my main blog, but had to cross post it here because it is both an example of the way online tools inform our worlds, thinking, learning and practice AND it is about much of what we'll be talking about here in Australia. It is "walking the talk," in a way, but the walking is spread about the globe. Pretty cool.

I again reflect on the connections that brought me to this moment in time. The people who I would not have otherwise met or learned from, the way they are connected to each other in ways that sometimes surprises me. It is beautiful. As I think back to the amazing Aboriginal art I saw yesterday, I remember the paintings that are complex interweavings of dots and lines that make a whole that is stunning and beautiful. Like our human networks.

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