A Crowd of One

April 9, 2007
Why do drivers warn people they'll never meet of police traps by flashing their lights? How did eBay's community of trust make it victorious over the competition? Why do terrorists tend to come from richer, better educated families? These are some of the questions posed by Clippinger, a senior fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Calling on philosophers, scientists and economists for support, Clippinger looks to human evolution for answers, and expounds on how human phenomena like language and social customs evolved not for individual advancement, but for the benefit of the group. Along the way, the author finds evolutionary forces at work in Renaissance Florence and Enlightenment-era Edinburgh, the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes in the presidency of George W. Bush and the genius of the human immune system in the case of identity fraud Mark Spengler. Despite the data-heavy material, Clippinger has a breezy pace, an impressive breadth of knowledge and a knack for clear explanation that recalls Malcolm Gladwell. The volume's prime weakness is its overbroad range; Clippinger leaves no doubt he's willing to ask interesting questions, but without a central thesis it's hard to hook a reader-much less a crowd.

May 1, 2007
One might think that issues of trust, empathy, and reciprocity are peripheral to the functioning of civil or military institutions or computer networks. In fact, Clippinger (senior fellow, Berkman Ctr. for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School) argues that no network can function in the absence of agreed-upon systems for generating trust, resolving conflict, allowing for negotiation, or managing risk. Because it changes so quickly, the digital sphere is a laboratory for observing social network innovation. The problems of how to negotiate, barter, and build trust all needed to be resolved before eBay could function, for example. This title is part of an emerging field of study that seeks to understand behavior in social networks through fields as diverse as evolutionary biology, primate studies, classical economics, and cultural histories of successful "trust networks" (Renaissance Florence is the example offered here). It's a heady mix of theory and prescriptive advice. The final chapter, addressing the topic of "open identity systems" for thwarting Internet-based identity theft, looks at a practical system for applying the theories described in preceding chapters. For libraries collecting books on computer science, business, and social psychology.Michael Dashkin, QUALCOMM, San Diego

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