Friday, October 04, 2013

[ufibbecj] Controlling who you know

Whether you get ahead in the world is supposedly very dependent on who you know.  This is, to some extent, a zero-sum game: a helpful person can only know a limited number of people.

What social mechanisms have evolved around this game?  We can imagine a middleman preventing two people from meeting for the benefit of the middleman.  Can society as a whole be made better off by breaking down some existing social mechanisms?

Technologies to level the playing field will likely see significant opposition.  What will such opposition look like?  I think I've heard of systematic attempts to destroy the usefulness of LinkedIn by false endorsements of skills.

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