Clay Shirky continues to do and say important things about social software, p2p technoeconomics, and much other smart mobby stuff. He recently pointed out via his newsletter two “brief and speculative essays” about “Friendnets” — topologies of social networks overlaid on communication networks: “Gonze and Zooko (scroll down to 2002-12-14).

(Via NEC @ Shirky.com, a mailing list about Networks, Economics, and Culture)

(Gonze):

Unlike automated reputation systems like Advogato, the Slashdot

moderation system, eBay seller ratings, and MojoNation, reputation

management in a friendnet is a manual operation. This is a good

thing: humans are good at fuzzy reasoning and computers aren’t.

(Zooko):

But it seems to me that the first thing we should do is go back and

reconsider step 1: the part where you forget everything you know

about your friends and family and treat messages received over the

Internet from strangers half-way around the world the same as

messages received over the Internet from your best friend. I think

that the emergent network designer should focus on the human

context, both because the human context is where our ultimate goals

and values are defined, and also because the human context is the

best source of a uniquely valuable network resource: trust.