Learning to trust... or not...

The more I adopt social software and transact online the more I am discovering I have to trust people i don't know and may never meet... which doesn't come naturally to me in any way shape or form. It's certainly not a bad thing as imagine what an impact this will have for global communications over a period of time.

If you look at my previous world of social interaction... as a cancerian, I have a hard shell in which i can hide. Perfected over years it had become quite effective when required... But that was for 'hard copy' social interactions... now i am having more and more 'soft copy' social interactions it's a whole new ball game; with new rules, a new language and far less geographic boundaries.

Just over the last week i have had a number of interactions with eBay purchasers, emailing, calling and coming to pick up items won. Some of these interactions have been positive and some not so positive. In order to make the transaction possible i needed to have a certain degree of trust in these people. Add to this interactions I have with Twitter, Facebook, Brightkite, Blogs I realised that I am actually communicating far more with people I don't have any physical contact with than with the people I know in person.

Then this leads me to think about the value of a hard copy as opposed to a soft copy, interaction. Do humans need to have hard copy interactions to exist as 'normal' human beings... if all you had were soft copy social networks how would humans evolve differently? What will happen to our language and what will my two and four year old be doing when they're in their thirties???

When I was young I was taught not to trust strangers... but what do i teach my children, now that I am having to cross my traditional boundaries. If people followed these traditional boundaries then all these fabulous online communities wouldn't be germinating. I am not really sure there is an answer to this pondering... but it's been good exploring it.