Tag Archives: Integrity

TRUST, Values & turning up in the I’m Funny T Shirt

22 Thursday Oct 2015

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… I maintain that trust is irrelevant to commercial exchange and that reference to trust in this connection promotes confusion.

— Oliver Williamson

 Trust. Small Word. Massive Impact.

But which ‘Trust’ do we actually mean when chiseling the word for the umpteenth time onto the Values Plinth? There are a few versions out there – and none more corrosive that faux TRUST or the TRUST that comes from the dressing up box of corporate affairs – fancy TRUST – a word draped in Savile Row charcoal cashmere, or beautifully typeset and set high on the wall – yet inert – made moribund at the moment of its stitching and forging.

Then there’s buttoned up TRUST. Ironed repressed imprisoned – bear baited into a contracted commitment between one actor and another.

In these contractual prisons, the real power of TRUST; as a proof that liberates people to act decently and respectfully and with singular purpose at all times, gets twisted and shoved; and roughly cut away to fit into the self interested margins of the contract it supposedly underwrites.

Then there’s the TRUST of the podium, the BIG TRUST of soundbites and ‘our journey’ and the soaring oratory of perseverance and endeavor – an ephemeral fleeting TRUST that fills both the chest of the corporate speaker impugning it and the hall into which they decant it, only to wash out of the back doors into faint memory and insignificance – sullied and cheapened by having ever been bought there in the first place.

And then there’s the TRUST that protests too much from the statements and the releases of those who have traded, stained and manipulated it most. (Yes, banks and financial institutions, that will be you, and your FMCG and retail friends there on the bench next to you; with their palm oil and indentured labour hidden in some foreign field that is forever England: or the provider of its pants at least.)

If you wish to speak of real TRUST, speak in hushed respectful tones; speak rarely; in fact, come to think about it, we’d rather you didn’t speak of it at all.

Much like the exquisite blue guitar in Nigel Tufnel’s Guitar room in Spinal Tap, there is a sense that to even point to TRUST would be to destroy it.

“its special, look, see, still got the old tagger on it, never even played it”

“you just bought it”

“dont touch it”

“…was just looking at it…wasn’t going to touch it”

“…well, dont point …even”

TRUST is a dream that so many institutions crave but in that craving lies the source of self deceit. In their idolising of it lies the greatest measure of how fragile it is in their world: and how often and easily it can be compromised, corrupted and set aside.

In one of the opening scenes of the film Gladiator, Marcus Aurelius explains to Maximus that Rome is not a place but a very very fragile dream:

“There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish…”

TRUST is that fragile. So it is best kept safe and sound and away from prying eyes under purposeful lock and key. It is made all the greater by remaining invisible and unreferenced.

But invisibility and absence are two very different things. The absence of TRUST renders every other corporate buzzword insignificant. Rigour, openness, expertise, integrity, promise, commitment and guarantee – all are simply conjuring tricks if not underwritten by real TRUST.

Real TRUST, the silent knowing kind, is the one that walks through relationships and partnerships without braggadocio or pomp.

Real TRUST never speaks its own name, claims its own accolade or states its own credential.

Much like its culturally-rooted cousin – ICONIC – it is an accolade for others to apply.

To state it is to turn up in the I’m Funny T Shirt. Don’t tell me that you’re funny, tell me a joke. I am wholly capable of deciding whether to laugh or not all by myself.

Real TRUST is not an academic concept or an intellectual exercise; much to the irritation of pretty much every business school, who seem to see TRUST as a compound fraction as opposed to the complex chaotic collision of context, circumstance, tangible and intangibles that it really is.

Real TRUST is felt, sought, fought for, prized, pursued, missed, believed, encountered, received, gifted, hard won, quickly lost, broken.

Real TRUST is to some professions a supply chain issue – the most critical systemic element that needs sustaining above all else – the securing of its source, its protection of its integrity, the sage management and application of its use, the zero waste and optimal energy processes that support it – all mandatory for its continued and unadulterated presence and role as the primary tool in the mitigation of risk for those professions

Real TRUST draws its potency from its paradox – from its staggering strength and precious fragility – while whole, real TRUST moves the hearts minds and mountains that find themselves in its thrall – but it can be shattered irreparably by a look, a word, the flick of a pen, the click of a mouse, an act sometimes so small as to be barely noticeable.

Real TRUST is the UNICORN of professional endeavor. While it exists in the world, all is well – but if it is forgotten, mortally wounded or set aside, the dark side will prevail.

A MATTER OF EMPHASIS

Real TRUST The assured reliance that someone else will do everything in your best interests and to the best of their ability.

Real TRUST The faith that they will, even in your absence, act faithfully and respectfully in regards to you and the things you hold most precious

Real TRUST  The sure knowledge that no exceptional, proprietary or empiric expertise knowing insight or skill will be held back or remain obscured in their undertakings for you.

Real TRUST  The singular base fabric of any profound relationship: woven from myriad strands and threads of multiple and relentlessly reoccurring and improving emotional and functional transactions of every shape size and hue

Real TRUST The invisible certainty that allows rigour to act unfettered in the room and in the moment

Real TRUST The slingshot of integrity: the champion of authenticity: the springboard of exception:

Real TRUST the most dynamic currency in the assurance economy: selectively invested but never traded or brokered.

Real TRUST the only critical investment worth making in any and every relationship no matter how big or small.

Real TRUST the unquestionable and immutable truth of any profession

Real TRUST is a market shaker, a world turner, an opinion shifter and a deal breaker – the one precious thing that cannot be bought or begged.

Real TRUST cannot be faked, cannot be belittled, cannot be impugned and will not be sold.

Real TRUST is more than a flat inert word on a values plaque or a commitment in a corporate mission. Real Trust is a living extant dynamic and irrepressible thing.

You cannot put real TRUST down, diminish it, demean it or set it aside.

It is the silent ROAR – the mighty Yawp – in every meaningful conversation: and cannot be talked over or shouted out

In the space between TRUST and WORTHY

TRUSTworthy is a simple word to describe a process person or material thing that can be relied upon to fulfil particular tasks time and time again with little decay or degradation in performance or effect –and in doing so make themselves worthy of trust.

It usually involves an incremental journey undertaken by two parties towards belief in each others ability to ‘do what they say they’ll do’ – a journey that is mostly undertaken via proof – measurable evidences great and small – of each’s ability to engender trust in the other.

The levers and pulleys of TRUST?

TRUST seems to be most often engendered by people with an unshakeable sense of Purpose to effect good things in the world – for both themselves and others: People with an irrepressible belief in the simple authenticity of what they do, doing the right thing and keeping their promises. These people regularly demonstrate an inappropriate degree of naked courage – effortless and comfortable in their transparency. They relentlessly apply this belief, commitment trait and nature in everything they do. They are meticulous in their approach – rigour never far from their mind. And they value integrity above all else.

UNSHAKEABLE                 Purpose

IRREPRESSIBLE               Belief

NAKED                           Transparency

RELENTLESS                   Application
METICULOUS                  Rigour
TRUE                              Integrity

I TRUST you to have an opinion

I TRUST you to have the right intention in proffering it

I TRUST you to design your particiaption  in commercial ethical and value terms acceptable to all parties

I TRUST you to price what you do fairly

I TRUST you to do what you say you’ll do

I TRUST you to not compromise the relationship or other interests while doing it.

I TRUST you to reconcile fairly and in good time

I TRUST you with my interests

I TRUST you

Top Tips for Carbon Dating & the life and times of a clean energy provider.

12 Monday Jan 2015

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The populist conversation around creating a clean energy love in seems to be going nowhere about as fast as Jeremy Clarkson in an oil-burning, coal-fired, gas-expanded super-car through a village of impoverished 3rd Worlders living on scorched earth!

So anyone out there in the world trying start a conversation with the unenlightened everyday someone around the idea of embracing clean renewable energy can be in for a cold start.

So which reframe might help us get people to more easily consider moving from a short term promiscuous ‘lowest price who cares?’ transactional relationship to a long term committed ‘that price I care’ value based relationship.

Reason? Glamour? EQ? IQ? Finding the hook can be tricky. So lets try looking at the problem through the everyday human condition – one that everyone can relate to.

The first time you meet a dyed in the wool cheap coal and oil energy user with a shiny new clean energy package you could say it is a little like a First Date.

So lets start there.

As with all dates, especially first ones, you need to be clear about your objective going in, as this defines the rules of engagement.

Do you just want a few dates? Or would you like a long term relationship with them?

If its a just a few dates, some passion and then goodbye; go in fast and furious. Thick skinned. Impervious. Immutable.

If it’s the long term relationship you want. That’s a different thing entirely.

That demands a more intuitive approach. Sensitivity. Respect.. Awareness.

So, when approaching a traditional coal, oil or gas burning energy consumer for the first time, here are a few tips and watch-outs to help shape a better first impression and relationship.

First Dates

1. Don’t assume that turning up bright eyed and bushy tailed with a shiny new something will get you straight to First Base.

Appearing with a clean renewable energy package will NOT immediately have them springing to click on the ‘change of provider’ PDF.

Putting aside old familiar and trusted things – however toxic they may be in reason – is not a given. Sentimentality and attachment are very strong emotions in the human condition.

2. Don’t assume that Reason aces everything.

Not everyone sees things reasonably: usually they will be quite the opposite – viewing life through a very human and subjective eye.

So Pointing out the deepest most destructive failings and flaws of their current energy choice may not only make them highly defensive of the choice they have made but also of themselves for making it.

Example: When you first meet a very old and good friend of your new crush, only to find that they’re truly awful: some recidivist throw back to a 1970s British sitcom with all the chauvinist, misogynist, racist paraphernalia that goes with it; you can do one of two things:

Either call out their dreadful-ness as loudly as possible, pointing out and highlighting every flaw, to then flounce off muttering phrases such as ‘How can you put up with that &*$%”

Or you can sit back, observe the relationship; assess it: for the depth of its feeling, and the integrity of its bond. This allows you to decide whether the presence of the friend is immutable and in turn a corollary to as yet unseen things to come in your crush; traits or behaviours that you have simply not registered through your lusty mists.

3. Be prepared for Double Daters.

Most people are unlikely to put all of their energy eggs in one clean renewable basket straight away. They will probably switch backwards and forwards or leave the big stuff as it is and just flirt with a clean and serene energy lifestyle to warm themselves up and test the edges of it. In that way the average Jane and Joe is not dissimilar to the average energy monolith. Just like GEs diversified energy portfolio – which unsurprisingly contains the smoky old faithfuls.

4. Get someone to put in a good word for you.

With most successful dates, the battle is one before it is fought. Someone ‘bigging you up’ prior the actual meeting can work wonders.It is also a way of utilising the grapevine that will be buzzing whether you like it or not. The odd whisper and aside and some furious txt-ing and calling will have already happened on the side between the two parties friends and acquaintances way before you get to the bar/restaurant/club/room.

Small businesses are always looking for smart wins in the efficiency and economies department. And they have a far closer eye on the way the business runs itself and makes money. Target the Owner Managers businesses, deliver for them and they’ll be singing your praises in the pub in a flash in very everyday and human sized terms.

So lets have a run at that and see if it enlightens the moment and sets us up for success or failure. And if that doesn’t work we’re just going to keep trying others. because we need to. So all ideas gratefully received.

Answers on a postcard.

NOTE This blog was inspired by a chat at Sustainable Brands London’14 with some super bright clean energy people around the topic of rewriting the narrative of the whole carbon issue – which to be frank currently reads like a Wet Wednesday, when it should come across like a Sunny Saturday.

Storytelling, the Circular Economy & uncovering the marks of desirable identity

17 Monday Mar 2014

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A year of so ago someone at an unnamed Management Consultancy asked my opinion on why a very rigorous and robust case for a premium beer manufactured wholly on a circular economy model might fail to light a consumer’s fire.

All the ingredients for success were there. A more than decent liquid product with a little room for some tweaking. Simple reuse strategy of bottles, a clear distribution network to run a reverse logistics offering across; state of the art cleaning and preparation process of the used bottles; no loss or tainting of liquid content or loss of quality guaranteed.

Furthermore there had been clear segmentation to suggest that there was a well disposed audience waiting in the wings to consume an intelligent beverage as defined by an interest in purpose beers, smart production and the socialisation of exception and personal identity –  the fun stuff like mass customization of the beer brand experience as pioneered by social network fuelled personalized label offerings. “I liked the beer so much they put my name on it”

The ultimate kicker was the maths. Wholly sound. Geared to grow. Great figures. Nice curve. Everything was sweet.

EXCEPT.

Some lunatic had taken the idea into a consumer research space and asked the average beer drinker what they thought; with no thought given to the story of the product and how it tied into the identity of the drinker.

Doh!

I know little, and increasingly less – but the one thing I have realized as a beer drinker and a watcher of consumers for some time is that once the base line need and accessibility issues are overcome and the financial bridge crossed:

I’m thirsty. I need a lift. There’s a bar. I have a fiver.

The last thing is the ‘lip smack moment in the 10 seconds before the order. What label on that shelf or pump head with all of its reserves of delivery, friendliness, cache and identity will hit the spot?

The matters of identity become elevated to near religious proportions especially in the realm of lager lager lager and the race to the middle (or bottom as some would frame the quality of industrial scale lager production and the brands they deliver).

To walk into a room with a load of drinkers and simply take them through the rational functional concept of circulating glassware and refilling, all backed up by a zero water strategy delivered through off setting simply isn’t going to do it.

There is no desire in the spreadsheet and rationality of a production line; even a circular one – only in what it promises, transports or delivers.

I’m feeling the beer and drinking the beer before I’m thinking the beer.

If it was real ale that would be different. If it was micro-brewery panache that would be compulsory. But not in this instance.

All I could do was to respond to the consultant with the simple question: where’s the storytelling? Where’s the everyday human insightful ‘it’ that every stakeholder can seize upon and unify around? from the brewer employee, to the bottle blower, the water strategist, the production engineer, the hop grower, the distribution partners and most importantly the drinker

Where I asked does the storytelling that draws from the circular truth of the product meet the circulating needs of and storytelling of the drinker’s identity?

If I am to drink from a recycled and reused bottle what am I to think of the bottle I hold and the beer that it carries. It’s not a smart beer. I don’t want a smart beer. I want a beer that’s ‘me’. Or a beer that ticks the badge box of the Me I’d like to be; and goes down nicely on the way to the heart of my repertoire.

So we explored a little more the idea of recycled and reused bottles and the storytelling of a ‘goes around comes’ around world.

For me, the reused bottle is etched into my psyche via the memory of the Coca-Cola bottles I used to see racked up by the side of the bars on the continent (Italy France & Spain were my direct experiences).

Their surfaces mottled pitted and misted by thousands of the tiniest scuffs, scratches and scrapes, these bottles merrily wended their way back to the bottler to be washed and refilled and resold to me and the myriad millions of others who happily consumed from them again and again.

Those bottles with their multiple rewards experience – anticipation, grasp of the bottle, the glass to the lips, the taste, the finish and the return and rewards in the shape of a deposit refund pricing system. These were complete little eco systems of joy.

(I still believe to this day that the Happiness Factory traded touching millions of hearts for touching billions of lips in their transition away from glass to the can and PET or now PLA varieties of packaging. Nothing says summer in the heart like grasping the profile bottle. If Coca Cola ever wanted to take a trip back to the future, re engage in what made them great and differentiate themselves once more they could do worse than figure out the circular logistics and shift everything back to glass. Full Stop.)

I digress. So the marking of multiple life cycles like those on those bottles is a rich texture of story telling. And sets the bottles out as something with an innate integrity of multiple existences.

This is something that we already value as human beings. We consciously or subconsciously rate and measure people by the marks life leaves behind and the marks they choose to make on themselves. The marks they carry on the outside are testament to the lives they have lived and the richness of experience therefore that may reside on the inside.

A beer that travels in such a receptacle might be viewed as a richer brew much like the human being with the abstract unexplained scar, the post operative welt, the skateboard injury, the tattoo, the tribal motif.

SO if I were to have to go into a room tomorrow and set out the story telling of a beer founded on a goes around comes around circular production system I would probably tell it thus:

A real beer comes in a bottle that’s lived a little.

It starts to tell me a story into which I the drinker am to be inextricable woven.

But more importantly it compels you the brewer to create a better product: to fill that bottle with a liquid that is defining in some way – differentiated – not a homogenous wash but a picante brew. With some spice and edge. Disquieting and memorable – but ultimately that shines some light on a grey day.

The circular compound nature of the bottle that’s lived a little also compels you to write a more interesting social nature and behaviour into the fabric of it – and to build a ‘reward’ in at every round.

Perhaps there is a trademark mark that is applied every time it goes through. Perhaps there is a diary of life for the bottle – of the lips and lives it has touched.

Crass or unpleasant to some – but to those towards the edges, looking for something with more chutzpah; perhaps a more desirable story.

So scar my glass with a promise that reaches beyond peddling same old same old. Set the spirit and authentic product truth of the product at the heart of the story: a story that elevates the fundamental brilliance of a wholly circular concept in bottled beer.

Then I might be inclined to take up that beer and tattoo it on my heart.

For a while at least.

Pandora, The Big Box of Trust & The long shadow of our digital Dorians.

20 Thursday Feb 2014

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“I’m not sure when it all began – the butchers, the bailers the lynchers and the faith killers

I know that the crazy happened in June. Because June’s my birthday and mum and dad got really busy and mum missed my birthday, which she never does.

But the killings and the jumpers and the religious nuts I think that came a little later

My name is Pandora and I’m 12 years old. But people say I’m quite grown up for my age.

I live in a house which is kind of big but a bit higgledy-piggledy with my brother Jake and our dog Slipper

I’ve got a hand me down 3DS from my brother but our i-pads and kindles went long ago. And all the internet stuff got burned in the garden – dad lost it when mum and dad were having a barbecue. Embarrassing.

I call all the crazy people the butchers and bailers and lynchers because that’s what my mum and dad called them.

Not sure what they were all getting so weird about. I mean WTF! have they been doing?

There used to be just one of two of them; on the news; nutters dad thought. Even when there was loads he still thought it was just some hysterical bunch of muppets. But when the boy next door set him-self on fire, dad stopped taking the piss out of them.

My mum is called Jane and my dad is called Mike

She’s a doctor at the local hospital and he’s a Paramedic. Now they’re what you call busy.

OVERARCHING NARRATIVE

Let’s start with the end. There’s a date – the day of reckoning – that never comes – futile and banal but true.

06:6:16

The date surfaced one day on a blog thread tracked to some blog in the mid west they say; the blog was on something weird like Vintage Tyres or something! Just popped up. And then everyone on one IP got the notification email. That was the beginning.

Then the usual bollocks: different people in blogs and chat rooms all over the place, decoding it and giving it different meanings: trying to tie it to their belief systems – some coded Book Of Revelations schtick. Piss off Dan brown. It’s the number of the beast yeah, bow wow woof woof, bow wow wow wow, its a Diamond fucking Dog. Grow up.

Some called it a future point after the closing of the Mayan calendar – an echo of previous catastrophic incidence – yuh! right, but mmmnnn, how did they manage to turn that into an editorial piece on the birth place of chocolate and the new One & Only resort.

What would the Scientologists make of it?…Islam?…Stephen Hawking? Dawkins? Deputy Dawkins? Scooby Doo? Those darned kids?!

Watching faith leaders and scientists throwing shit at each other makes you laugh.The scientist saying the last time someone threw this much misplaced trust into the world they called it Christianity. The fight was mental. Never seen a Bishop gouge!

The whole thing was like some online practical joke – really small, popping up here and there with funny little cartoons – like Shrigley had done an April fools day digital terrorism thing with a smile.

But then the date started to scare people. Some bloke said that society will turn on and consume itself.

Then the ‘infestation began’ – date counters popping up, unannounced and uninvited – locking everyone’s device to it – that date –  toxic countdown Davina!! – and then the small overly chirpy and chilled Instruction messages appeared.

No-one was laughing any more. And then the bodies started to rain down. Who’d have a Wii!

 —————————————————————————————

SAVE THE DATE! Do Not reply!

 6.06.16

Hi Pandora!

We have reason to expect a massive reverse feed flow or first wave ‘spill’ of all personal data and content generated or searched on your device back to the registered user at 6am GMT; 06:6:16.

We believe that the individual data caches spilled back into your device (and any further device coupled, tethered or sync-ed to it) will include all data threads from every primary device including lap tops, tablets and smart phone devices as well as institutional work email systems secured and unsecured from 2006 – 2016.

They will also include all thread and integrated platform data of the registered user from all linked and shared data sources – including but not restricted to social networks, content share platforms, site memberships

We have identified three super Global caches of data-intel and data-history – including search histories, downloaded content, hard drive back ups, data stored in universal HISTORY and CLOUD platforms, banking security data, and medical records – which have been infected by Virii which have preset the caches to start ‘evicting’ and ‘spilling’ data back through the feeds from which they came.

It is also predicted that on this date there will also be further ‘second wave spill’ of the first wave data content to all coupled and synced devices and receivers within a 10 metre area of the user and the device. Please be aware that data, stored content, live social network activity and prior browser information may spill through any of your connected appliances or through open app access areas.

If for any reason you have any reason to mitigate the occurrence of spillage or are concerned about privacy security and the potential legal legitimacy of any materials pertaining to you and your device, click here and a CODE PIN will be sent to you within the next few days giving you details of your personal Data Nurse, a trained and certified professional who can advise you on how to manage the impacts of any content or materials of yours on your personal life or professional career.

NEXT STEPS – URGENT

Download the Dorian folder & App provided onto your principal device and copy over onto any other devices synched with your principal computing device

In the event of spill Please drag all ‘spilled’ materials – both content and data files’ from your live and stored browser, email, voice/skype into the folder name Dorian. Once activated these folders will automatically empty every hour.

Thanks for your attention. More Soon.

—————————————————————————————-

TREATMENT NOTE ‘Pandora’ was originally written as both a provocative polemic and an illustrative story to test the dimensions of TRUST in the digital domain: particularly concerns around Big Data and the questionable status or privacy and identity security: and ultimately the sanctity of everything that we happily entrust to the mouthpiece, camera, keyboard and cache of our digital lives.

IMAGINE

Imagine a day when the fractured data-daubed picture in the attic of every connected mobile human being suddenly poured it guts back into the world around them – on to interactive bus stop posters, trans-vision screens, bus announcements, live emails, txts, digital TV’s, lap-tops, tannoys in airports, speakers at gigs.

Imagine the living writhing turbulent psyche of the collective digi-sphere suddenly throwing its indiscrete guts up through every device that had ever touched it

Imagine if the digital history of every illicit conversation, betrayal, desperate moment, flight of anguish, inappropriate txt; every white, red and black lie uttered, every indiscretion reported, every secret shared, every questionable purchase, every sadness and painful exclamation made public, every grubby search, predatory stalk, invasive squint and questionable image and moving picture ever considered, spilled in to the bright white light of public scrutiny?

Imagine if every piece of it played up in bits and bytes on to every live device within 100 yards of you – with no ability for you to control delete or obscure it? Imagine this following you like a data jet stream everywhere you went. Unshakeable!

A buzzing phosphorous halo of the dull, the petty and the imaginable intertwined with the inexcusable and the unspeakable  – all hidden until now in some cloud attic, rendered on the living connected canvas of you.

Imagine our TRUST being thrown back in our face like that and then in looking back at it imagine that we could ever say that we should have ever done anything other than see it coming.

Funny thing, trust. Sometimes we never really think about how much of it we invest in things with little real proof whether the receptacle of it is deserving of what we invest in it.

Trust us they say. Trust is our business. Trust is the currency we trade in; Trust what we do for you – and the social networks allow us to test the trust they peddle, put it through its paces, act against it if it is found wanting. So we think we’re the puppet masters of trust.

Trust is the new Funny: and every corporation and brand is wearing the I’m Funny t shirt. But what are we entrusting them with? The linear and primary dimensions of what they promise to deliver for us and for which we hold them to account: from soap and fashion to legal services to gamification to test drives, nappies and food – are all scrutinised to the nth degree.

But what about the stuff they are hoovering up along the way. The maps of our data day selves: our highly personal tics and behaviours; the intimacies of our banality; preferred top up days, favourite days for stepping beyond our financial means, the join the dots nature of our virtually invisible online shopping basket, the routes we take home, the time we surf, the things we buy, the relationship between when we read a news article or watch a movie and what it inspires in us: social angst and need for connection? reassurance shopping? comedy youtube clips? tech porn browsing the latest upgrade? All that behavioural stuff we lovingly entrust to them. Its what enables them to ‘predict’ us, our likes, our preferred offers and in which day part, format, colour and context we wish to receive them.

Every time we invest the most intimate of information into any device, I sense we think little of the integrity of the host at its journey’s end. Sometimes, when a PIN number goes walkies or some card details get lifted, we feel stung, burned by it. Scalded by its betrayal and the sudden loss of security in our little bubble

But think of every indiscretion, every indiscrete share, message, intimacy, personal detail search, obsession, amateur stalk, desperate seeking, inappropriate image shared or searched. Every site we dwell within, the online decisions we make. And that’s before we get anywhere near the new cowardly, shitty little social art of trolling!

The history of our digital lives, lived in the ether, is in effect our Picture in the attic: and we are all the new Dorian Grey.

Luckily for us, there is little occasion for us to stare that picture in the face and see in its glistening, glorious digital technicolour every scar, pustule, sore and canker: evidence of the indiscretions, small horrors, corruptions and cruelties of our digital lives. Rarely do we ever have to comprehend the fabric of our real-time dysfunctional selves.

To point at the porn industry and the bomb makers as exemplars and leaders of the singular toxicity of on line lives lived is to make this all far too one dimensional.

Imagine if we scoured and cross-correlated the underbelly of big data along very bleak human threads: betrayal, cruelty, spite, indifference, entrapment, lying, duplicity, complicity. Imagine the swirling fabrics of our own penny dreadful data knitted together into one long spool of stuttering humanity. Imagine how each one would wrap itself around our naive model of trust and asphyxiate it in seconds.

So why do we explore trust issues in such depth in every other sphere: relationships, consumption, financial diligence, ethics in science to name a paltry few: yet this massive petaflop blind spot, this clouded issue just sits there. And we pour the smallest and most vulgar details of our lives into it shamelessly and relentlessly.

We trust that the people collecting this data are trustworthy and respectable. We trust them to only look at what they’re allowed to, as if they will coyly look away when huge tranches of data that lifts the skirt on our illicit humanity comes their way.

But that’s where the money is.

And as every cautionary tale will tell you: that’s where your problem is; the venal nasty ‘it’ of life.

Everything that you entrust to the ether; every bit of your hidden self is covered with your digital fingerprints. And that’s how money, spies and slaves are made.

I’ve got something on you, sonny. Now, all I’m asking, for us to be square, is that you do this small, perhaps slightly improper act for me and we’ll call its quits-ish.

It’s how every criminal King, twisted Queen, gangster, despot, tyrant, emperor, and oligarchy has ever controlled anyone and kept them in their thrall.

And we just keep plying our human behavioural trade through every data-grabbing geo-caching GPSisng search-saving image-hosting money-shifting elephant-memoried bit-coining device we can get our hands without the slightest thought of whether we trust the trafficker of this complex revealing and darkening data and what its real value is – both to them and us.

That is where I think the issue is. Not that we are knowing and complicit: I allow my data day self to be monitored measured tweaked and collated; and I get benefits. Sure you do.

And it’s not that we don’t trust these people to both manufacture and deliver the soap, the car, the burger, the shoes, the cheese slices, the whatever, in a manner that is both transparent and trustworthy.

All I am venturing is that perhaps, while we are being handed transparency and the ability to test the integrity of our trust in that action, we are gifting away the more important and most precious coins in our pockets.

I would venture that the rewards are relatively quite small, given what you’re giving away. If the real currency is data: our data; then perhaps the new breakthrough brand will not be another online currency; the breakthrough will be the aggregator that allows us to define a market price for our data against its lifetime customer value to these brands and businesses, liberating us to invest it where best suits us and manage the returns we make on it.

There’s a algorithm challenge. But until then, mine’s a TRUST Me! I’m a BRAND t.shirt.