With the banking system turning to custard because trust has been so seriously undermined by behaviours, actions and inactions, the question 'In whom shall we trust' is even more pertinent.
It would seem that at every turn, actions are taken by organisations and individuals that undermine trust and confidence in existing systems. Examples range from the tragic, as is the case in China, where babies have died because of melamine-loaded milk powder, to the petty, such as the news online from eweek, reporting that hackers were making good use of Google Trends to lure unsuspecting users into downloading malware. These - and the multitude of other examples - indicate that trust is perhaps a more valuable commodity - ultimately - than other highly prized items like oil.
As humans, we need to trust others in order to function as a society but society has largely, over recent centuries, replaced the creation of a trustworthy common good with the search for profit and individual gain.
It is interesting - if a little scary - to watch the financial institutions, with their global reach and influence, fragment under the weight of their own mistrust. Your bank's mistrust in the States will create problems for my neighbour in NZ as they look to buy a car or renew their mortgage or, far worse, undermine attempts to borrow money that would have meant a new well being created for a remote community that has no clean water.
That to me is, and always has been, an unfair and fraudulent system.
My hope, in the general fallout that will dog us in the months ahead, is that the newer, more relevant and sustainable business models that have been bubbling under the radar for some time, take this opportunity to come to the fore. Then we will just need a few new political models based less on power retention and more on the common good - and we'll be all set.
Google v. Microsoft - but will we ever be better off?
An interesting moment at Proctor and Gamble was reported by CIO this week which apparently saw Microsoft executives jetting round the place in a bid to persuade the consumer giant not to switch from Microsoft's products to Google Apps, the open source platforms with equal functionality available for free.
Personally, I am delighted that something has been born that will break the grip of Microsoft on corporate and personal computing - it has been long overdue. I must declare that I am a Mac devotee. Before we hit the beach, our old garage in the UK looked like a mini-Mac museum with the evolutionary process of the Mac charted by the corpses of abandoned machines on the shelves, so part of me had hoped that Jobs and Co would be the ones to ease the Microsoft stranglehold. Anyone who has worked on a Mac or some of the other operating systems will tell you how superior they are to Microsoft's clunky, unintuitive and pedestrian programmes. And for quite a while, Mac users were important to the company, which is sadly not the case now as they have become fashion victims of their own success - too cool to care anymore! I always felt Microsoft gained market dominance because they were really much better at selling the stuff than anyone else, not because the products they sold were in any way superior.
So I have watched Google Apps development with some glee - tempered with the reservation and concern that ultimately Google could simply replace Microsoft in the 'software world domination stakes'. At the moment, I would suggest that Google would be odds-on favourite to win but even that doesn't delight me particularly, because I don't want to see one Goliath replaced by another - that doesn't do any of us any favours at all. Dependence on one platform and one platform alone for search, retrieve, fact, apps, trends, rank and authority to name but a few, means that that platform must be absolutely trustworthy and able to serve each public with integrity and fairness. But Google now has so many 'publics' their interests are bound to clash - so whose interests will the organisation chose to serve first - if at all? The backlash against Google has been building for some years and is not improving any - here's a couple from the archives - there are heaps more out there. When one company dominates everything, does it have to engage in effective relationship building in order to maintain its 'licence to operate' from users? Microsoft got away with it for years - but many, many users were always looking out for something that would release them from their virtual bonds. Google's interested publics are not just their users - its omnipresent nature means that just about everyone believes they have a stake in the organisation, whether this is true or not. And anyway - it's free isn't it? Why should we care?
Simply because information - as much as trust - is a vital commodity in our 21st century world and shouldn't be controlled or dominated by one party - any more than the oil should have been in the 20th century.
Years ago, when I first took to the road to talk technology to those who weren't online but needed to be, I got used to the helpless giggles when I held up my phone and explained that a mobile phone would be all we needed in the very near future to work, play and socialise. What I hadn't realised at that stage, but which dawned on me pretty quickly as I watched Google's roll out of applications and tools, was that as Microsoft was to the PC in recent decades, so Google will be to the phone in the years ahead, which is not a good thing.
So we need a few more 'Davids' out there. If for no other reason than to keep Google on its toes and constantly aware that despite a customer base of billions, it must still pay close attention to the individual user. For the public relations practitioners employed by Google, they must be active advocates within Google, rather than outside Google so that public interests are served. Tricky, but not impossible. After all, there is always Google Analytics...