Booked: Reputation Economics

His publisher's profile says Joshua Klein is a hacker and documentary maker who has consulted for the FBI, CIA and Microsoft, has written for Har- vard Business Review and the New York Times and has spo- ken at Davos. With this back- ground, Reputation Economics promises interesting perspectives and does not disappoint.

The book is partly about data analytics and how corporations are using it to predict our future behaviour as consumers. However, more interestingly, it moves on to examine if there is a way to harness these technologies to empower individuals.

Klein’s view is that technology is heralding a new era in which reputation, rather than money, is the strongest curren- cy of all. A person’s reputation can function far more effectively to ensure wealth than the machinations of massive bur- eaucratic and highly impersonal institutions, he says.

There is now an exploding number of internet platforms whose sole purpose is to vali- date and authenticate communities of such individuals’ reputations for any exchanges.

While companies can have reputations, too, they cannot enjoy the level of trust two people can establish between each other.