People Will Talk: The Surprising Science of Reputation

246 Pages·2011·1.19 MB·English

by  John Whitfield

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: Follow the Leader

Chapter 2: An Introductory Offer

Chapter 3: You Scratch His Back, and I’ll Scratch
Yours

Chapter 4: Casting a Shadow

Chapter 5: Saving Face

Chapter 6: Just to Get a Rep

Chapter 7: Nosy Neighbors

Chapter 8: Panopticon

Chapter 9: A Tool and a Weapon

Chapter 10: Future Discounting

Chapter 11: Panopticon 2.0
Chapter 12: Us and Them

Acknowledgments

Index

Also by John Whitfield

In the Beat of a Heart: Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature
Copyright © 2012 by John Whitfield. All rights reserved
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ISBN 978-0-470-91235-5 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-11464-3 (ebk);
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For Tom
Introduction

Cassio: Reputation, reputation, reputation! O! I have lost my reputation. I
have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.

Iago: As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily
wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle
and most false imposition: oft got without merit, and lost without deserving:
you have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser.

—William Shakespeare, Othello, act II, scene III
As 1996 began, an increasing amount of Pierre Omidyar’s time was taken up
with a site called AuctionWeb, which he had launched a few months earlier as a
hobby. One chore of Omidyar’s was fielding about a dozen e-mails a day from
buyers or sellers who were in dispute. AuctionWeb made no attempt to control
its users, charged no fees, and gave no guarantees; it was simply a digital market,
a place for buyers and sellers to meet. When complaints came in, Omidyar, who
had a day job as a computer programmer, would forward the message to the
other person involved and ask the parties to resolve the matter between
themselves. This usually worked, but Omidyar would have preferred not to get
involved at all.1
AuctionWeb was possibly the least reassuring trading environment ever
devised. Buyers were invited to bid on products they hadn’t seen and then send
money to people they didn’t know, who were identified by usernames and virtual
storefronts that had cost them nothing to set up and would cost them nothing to
replace under different names. In such a situation, the obvious risk was that
without someone in charge who had the power to punish bad behavior,
AuctionWeb would become what economists call a market for lemons. Buyers,
worried that their purchases would arrive in worse condition than advertised or
not arrive at all, would bid low. High-quality sellers would take their goods
elsewhere, and a race to the bottom would start, resulting in a yard sale where
junk was sold for pennies.