Is trust evolving, blogger asks

The Orcology blog was something, wasn’t it.:) What I’ve loved about Microsoft employee blogging is that the text may be two-dimensional but the humans aren’t, and the posts about your mom and the journey after are as important as the posts about PDF formats and technical conferences. Thanks again Robert for being out there and doing it.

Cheers!

I tend to think that the Internet is reviving community and trust, not creating it. I grew up in a small community where everybody knew each other, supported each other and nobody locked their doors. Yes, the Internet allows people to be “in community” with folks from farther afield, even across the globe, and that’s terrific, and I love it, too. But it’s not the same as being able to take over a peach cobbler to somebody who just had an operation, or give a real warm hug to someone who needs it.

I think Web 3.0 is going to be about mixing virtual community with real community. We’re creators who live in material, physical space, and to be TOTALLY fulfilling, we need our “newfound” respect for and love of community to start sharing that material space, IMO. Meet and talk online, but still have a real and constant place to gather, to work, play, learn and share.

if a company is not in it for money, then they are a charity. At the end of the day, if you don’t make money, all your good intentions don’t enable you to do much of anything. You’re naive to think Bill and Paul got into software not to make money. If that wasn’t the case, why did they charge for people for BASIC? Why does MS have a piracy division? Why are they coming out with the Genuine campaign? I mean, if it’s about the software, why do they care if people paid for it or not?

All is right with the world when you are “doing what you can…with what you have with where you are”? Possibly. I admire what you do and don’t do. I’ve been in this section of the world for a very short time and have so much to learn. I know that with the appropriate tools and time I can do some remarkable things. Bill Gates started with a gene pool and ran with it.

As a parent of a teen, and three grown sons, the daughter of an aging mother, being the creative person that I am does not fit into a specific groove. I have to carve it. Daily. Finding my space, voice and energy, beefing about it, sharing and more than any single thing…caring what happens to people in this world along with my family. This is a difficult balance. The blog adds a dimension I might not otherwise have.

I placed a wish list up on my blog yesterday. I’ve wasted more time on lists than any other person I know. Dreams too. If I don’t cast I won’t get a fish. If I don’t have the boat…then I’ll fish from the shore. If getting a new program can help me to create a better life for myself, my family, and others through sharing. This then is the way for me to go.

I’m excited to have twenty readers. Really. This is new and thrilling. For me its like getting a wall to hang my paintings on. As my stockpile increases, a gallery. Then later a stage to speak my poetry from. I may know very little, if nothing about computers. But what I do know is that I need to learn, want to learn…

If I can write a one act play on a Sunday in cursive but on a PC it takes me two weeks because I don’t know where I am and have poor typing skills, am I wasting my time? If I can photoshop a costume design or learn autocad for sets and lighting shouldn’t I want to get the right programs and tutorials? And if my budget doesn’t allow for this is it wrong to ask. I can pump out loglines for screenplays, rough draft characters, and write a ton of dialogue and lyrics if given the right space and tools to work within. Sadly, I know little about this world called cyberspace. Before this I was decorating birthday cakes and working in purse factories. And too tired when I got home. Now I am. I AM.

I think half of this world is worn out. I don’t want to be that half.

NIKE…JUST DO IT.

How do I think? Example…I read that Apple is working on computers for school kids. MACTOPS pops into my head. Close up of these words and visual close up of product.

primary… colors… smart pinstriping…small brief case looking laptop…you won’t need a back pack…

And a nice package are visualized.

Crossing Guard remarks to a waiting parent…

“School books look different these days.”

Add the rear visual of a group of kids crossing the street. And all of them are carrying a “laptop” instead of a back pack.

Would somebody please do something with this…I don’t have the skills! My need for simplicity in a complex environment is overwhelming.

I want to create musicals.

My nature over rides all common sense. Then I remember the illustration I did for a character. The Roman goddess Pamona..the goddess of fruit… primarily apples. An entire world of animation runs through my head. Why. To decorate cakes?

I don’t think so. So if any person that reads this blogment, forgive me first, call me a F’logger…then please…give Steve J. a holler and tell him a nut case with some chutzpah needs to barter.

(It took me an hour to get this out)

ya this is true fight alaways helps cat`s & dog`s to say “fighting like cats &dogs”

So I am guessing the new spat with Adobe and the recent one with Symantec and the old one with Lucent Technologies falls under “trust and community…under radical change”? Sorry, nothing new under the sun (to pull from things ancient as Solomon), the Internet won’t change human nature, won’t cure all ills, won’t wipe out wars, won’t usher in a perfect happy utopia.

Quote of the Week: “We’ve still got a lot of work to do. We’re prioritizing quality.” – Steve Ballmer on Vista.

Now if you prioritize “quality”, aren’t the sub-level prioritisations of LESSER quality? Quality should be UNIFORM, across the board. Geesh, what an amazing gaffe, how Microsoft continues to let that clown waddle on as CEO never ceases to amazes me, trying to spend his way out of a strategic hole. If Ford went Microsoft, instead of “Quality is Job #1″, they’d go “Quality is a Prioritisation”.

But my best work is when I’m doing something for fun, or in support of a philosophy

Quit Microsoft, join the Peace Corps or become a member of the Clergy, and you can piddle and philosophize all the live long day.

…even if you don’t like Microsoft you’re OK.

Guess I am OK then

I loved your notion that communities can build trust Online. We so often hear the opposite and yet human who can find others of like interests in traits such as trust, can also make a difference to this industry. That way it may never become “all about money” in ways that erode trust and humanity! Thanks for saying it so well…

Brain Based Business

I need to apologize for my lack of intelligence and logic. You are a kind man, seemingly gentle in nature, hard working, well spoken, and a fantastically family oriented. Human.

I am simply a street dreaming cracker with a bunch of problems and a PC. Human Dogmeat.

Trust? It’s a much bigger word than it looks. Application of such arrives when one stretches outward to humanity. ?Blog…comments.

or unles your just plane stuped like me

My mistake, I really was way off topic. Wasn’t I?
I obviously hit an all time low.

I search for information, alone, from this desk, so that I might better share with this community the progress of my dreams. Obtaining feedback and assistance for skills I’m deficient in is just one of many concerns.

I pray you will see one of my plays or musicals before my time on this planet has ended.

As things stand, I’ll be fortunate if I can produce and perform it myself then post it on youtube. Shiver.

Maybe I should create a page or category called the Vomitorium.

Working for Microsoft, what “philosophy” would you be in support of? Because from the outside looking in recently it must be impossible for you to “do your best work”

(I didn’t read the rest of the comments)

I trust a company *more* if it’s clear that it’s only in it for the money. It’s more honest. The problem isn’t that companies want your money, it’s that bad companies trade the long term for the short term. The same behaviors that you call trust, I call good business if you take the long look at it.

The internet is truly an amazing thing. Where else, in what other place, what other time or dimension, can you find anything where you can realize the dream of communicating your thoughts, desires, opinions, stories, reviews, do politcal satire, or just blog about your what you are doing on the job, in newspaper column style, to a community of like minded people? And have those people give feedback to you? No where else on this god given Earth, that is for sure! And yes I do like Microsoft.

::scratching my head:::: in confusion at several above comments that “of course Microsoft’s in it for money”.
Matt is clearly speaking for himself as an individual when he states:
“But my best work is when I’m doing something for fun, or in support of a philosophy, like ‘the world needs better software.’ Blogging lets me communicate with you about when I’m not just thinking about business.”

There are things I do NOT like about Microsoft (which are, for the most part, the things I don’t like about a lot of super large corporations). However, Matt is an MS employee who is blogging — not “the Voice of Microsoft” who is blogging. That would be the PR approach to faked blogs that too many big corporations are still trying to roll out.

I think *many* people need to do things for a reason other than money in order to feel fulfilled. It’s a lousy feeling to have to do a job just for a paycheck I need. Most of us need to feel useful, creative, important in some small way

I’m glad to see that MS, for all of its big business behavior, *does* see the value of allowing employees to be individuals and value of allowing them to connect to individuals who might become customers. It is an effect that many PR blogs and businesses are trying to capture in a “how to.” But — really connecting human to human via the Net can’t be astro turfed or faked.
Thanks Matt!

I felt that the trust issue deserves a seperate response

I’m not sure that trust established online will ever be echoed offline. There is an awareness now that not everyone is alike. However, even in the 21st century, we are not entirely comfortable with those who are “other” than us.

The blessing of the Net is that it is easier to connect with others of similar background, circumstance and interests. There are issues of the “echo chamber” which is another discussion itself!

Now, if you mean that we will trust each other more because we will get used to being more transparent in our social, political and business transactions — maybe. It would be nice…I’m not so sure I see it happening though. We still have a long way to go to achieve basic levels of transparency. Businesses and politicians and others are still stating bald lies –evidently remaining clueless that in our connected world we have a record of what they have done and said.
Perhaps trust will evolve as generations who are aware that their audience has the means to fact check them take leadership roles.

You said: “I don’t trust someone who’s solely in it for the money.” Fair enough and, having just read your book, I understand where you’re coming from (man!). Kinda agree. My wife is an actress and she says “do what you love and the money will take care of itself.” (Although I’m also reminded of the comment someone made about Gandhi – that it cost a lot of money to keep him in poverty).

Oddly though, I was involved in running some market research for a UK government internet security website and we found that most home users trusted security companies (Symantec, McAfee) more than they would trust the government in this domain simply because they could clearly understand what their motivation was.

We’re trained from a young age to be suspicious of ‘something for nothing’ and to be wary of greeks (and geeks) bearing gifts. It’s hard to break that habit. I think one of the endearing thing about blogging is that it has this community aspect. I wonder how long it will last. I’m old enough to remember when Usenet was the same way and now it’s just spam and porn.

Cynically yours,

Matthew Stibbe
http://www.badlanguage.net