Safe to Play

The biggest single obstacle to the wider and more rapid uptake of online services and capabilities, in the private as well as the public sector, is trust or rather the lack of it.

All of the evidence seems to reinforce that what holds people back from a more full-blooded embrace of the online world is whether it is 'safe to play'. Will my privacy be respected? How will my information be treated and how can i be sure noone is going to mieuse it for purposes I didn't agree to when it was legitimately collected? On the sure-fire understanding that something does go wrong, how easy it for me to get proper redress and perhaps even compensation in some situations?

All of these simple, pratical and profoundly difficult questions are the focus of a short whitepaper we've published, called "Safe to Play". You can download it here - http://www.theconnectedrepublic.org/downloads/.

It's only short and is wide open for comment and feedback. (In fact, feel free to comment on the document on our new wiki facility if you want). One of its central propositions is that the network itself is in many situations a central part of the response to the problems that a more connected, and often uncomfortably transparent world, has generated.

It's an intriguing conundrum to contemplate that the cause of the problem might be the source of the solution. Or at least the source of an important part of the solution.

See what you think and let us know.