can derive from the full range of human stimuli, from instinctive reflex to cognitive choice. We suggest that the actual evocation of a stimulus for action on the part of a person derives from the characteristic we have termed trust. Consequently, a model for social ecosystems is preferentially oriented towards first a means facilitating the establishment of trust. All other aspects of interactions, indeed the full infrastructure through which interactions in a social ecosystem occur, must be grounded in trust. Moreover, within a functional social group, the trust of the individual members of the group must be congruently based. If the trust of individual members of a group emanates from different sources, then it will be difficult or impossible to subsequently achieve adherence to the mandates of policy. A facility to establish trust, then, is the primary characteristic forming the boundary of a social ecosystem, a concept to which we apply the term trust infrastructure.

The stimulus of human interactions is established by needs and the mechanisms of interactions are governed by policy. So, subordinate to the trust infrastructure is one or more policy infrastructures. A policy infrastructure comprises the environment in which interactions of a particular type can occur. These interactions are defined by a variety of rules that comprise the basic forces that occur within the policy infrastructure. The basic forces within a policy infrastructure can vary by person, or by any other entity that participates in an interaction. Consequently, a necessary facility for a policy infrastructure is a means to establish the identities of potential participants in interactions and a means to allocate authorization of specific characteristics or capabilities to those identities. These facilities make it possible to apply the appropriate rules to the appropriate participants for a specific interaction. The establishment of authenticated identity is so central to the social ecosystem that we view it as very closely aligned with the trust infrastructure, although its constituent mechanisms have the characteristics of policy infrastructure interactions.

Interactions elicit consequences. In fact, the general objective of an interaction is to evoke the desired consequences. The application of policy to interactions anticipates consequences. Policy will certainly anticipate the consequences of a successful interaction; one in which all the participants go away happy. Policy must also anticipate unexpected consequences; what happens when someone is not happy? When an interaction evokes a consequence outside the bounds of the policy infrastructure, the resolution of the consequence may be deferred to the physical ecosystem. In other words, the consequences will no longer be limited to the constructs of the social ecosystem. With this overview of the model in mind, let’s now delve a bit more deeply into the characteristics of the component elements of a social ecosystem, beginning with the trust infrastructure.

Trust is a measure of societal metaphoric understanding; it is the basis of all human grouping mechanisms. As we suggested earlier, trust can be defined as an expectation of an outcome with some degree of assurance. Trust established within a social ecosystem is the characteristic that determines whether we believe the rules to such a degree that we will abide by them, even if it hurts to do so. This does not mean that within the mind of the individual person, trust is always a consciously considered choice. Rather, it is the application of combined emotional and cognitive evaluation to the potential for stimulation of an action through or by the human motor system. In essence, within the human mind, trust is the characteristic that gates the trigger for an action stimulus. Remembering the association made by Klaus Scherer that we considered in our discussion of emotions in Chapter 4, the level of emotional response forms the clock that determines when we apply this gating function to a potential action stimulus. Moreover, it determines the level of trust required to actually stimulate an action. If we act, then we’ve achieved this necessary level of trust in our cognitively derived assessment as to whether to

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