Timothy Wilken
Some early readers have responded with concerns about keeping track of help exchanges. They say this is an unnecessary burden. We don’t bother to keep track of the times or ways we help our friends or families. In all the small exchanges of help that would occur every day, we would end spending more time in keeping track then in actually helping each other.
I don’t see it in that way. As an INTERdependent life form, humans need help. Today when I go to Ebay. I don’t go there concerned about keeping track of transactions. I go there because I want to buy or sell help.
Ebay keeps track of the transactions for me. They keep a history of all articles bought or sold on their network. The keep a log of all comments made by buyers about sellers and by sellers about buyers. All of this is done automatically with little effort on the part of the users. When I find an item for sale, I gain access to the sellers history and all comments made by other buyers that have dealt with that seller. This means I can find out quickly if that particular seller has trustworthy history and comment record. When I make a bid on on an item, the seller gains access to my history on ebay and all comments made about me. The lets the seller know if I have a trustworthy history.
As I envision it, The Gift Tensegrity could work in a similar fashion. The value of The Gift Tensegrity (the organization) is to validate gifters and giftees so we can interact with strangers with a large degree of safety. It is a system that will tell us who is trustworthy. This validation of trustworthiness is based on the history of the individuals themselves. It is based on the comments of those who have dealt with these individuals. It doesn’t ask us to take anyone’s word that they are trustworthy, it simply makes their history transparent. We are all free to judge for ourselves and interact with whomever we choose.