In an era of high technology, low commitment, one man says he's found a way to measure integrity - Heidi Benson, Chronicle Staff Writer Wednesday, June 21, 2006 What if integrity could be measured? Imagine the possibilities. Government officials could be prescreened for trustworthiness. Media pundits, memoirists, even potential mates would have to pass a test before we gave them our valuable time. One man -- Firinn Taisdeal, 49, a Walnut Creek "social software entrepreneur" -- believes he has stumbled on a way to measure accountability. For a small but rapt audience at the Commonwealth Club recently, he outlined the system he says could revolutionize human interaction. "Accountability and integrity are in decline," said Taisdeal, a jolly guy who is sober about his subject. "It is a cultural crisis of science fiction proportions." Launching a PowerPoint slide show from his laptop, he told the group, "I use computers to get people away from their computers." He blames our integrity problem on technology, which can insulate people from the consequences of their actions. Road rage and "flame" e-mails are prime examples. "Computers offer a hyper-abundance of low-quality interactions," Taisdeal said. He's no fan of online communities, either. "How can it be a community if you never meet face to face?" he asked. Besides, online communities allow anonymous screen names, which is an invitation for people to behave badly. Taisdeal believes integrity is more than just a personal trait or a quality. Integrity is a practice, a pattern of behavior that can be measured, if indirectly, by charting how well one keeps commitments, especially in the digital age, where glitches -- "I didn't get your e-mail!" "My cell phone ran out of juice" -- are a common excuse. Taisdeal got the idea of rating reliability while developing an Internet site to help people meet and expand their social activities. In 2003, he was a refugee from Silicon Valley who walked away from a job just before a historic public offering. Why? Because the people he worked with repelled him. "They were not just greedy. They had no integrity," said Taisdeal, who went from being about-to-be-very wealthy to being unemployed. "One day my girlfriend came downstairs and said, 'You need to join a lunch club,' " he recalled. He found one on Craigslist, but it was so inefficient, he started his own, with inspiration from Howard Dean, whose technologically innovative primary campaign he'd worked on. The Dean campaign, with the help of Meetup.com -- a site that helps people form social groups -- had provided volunteers with an easy set of Web tools for people to create their own events. Taisdeal designed a similar do-it-yourself event database, the Bay Area Lunch Club. Now called LinkUp Central, it offers more than lunch -- with 19,000 members setting up 12,000 events per year, from rock climbing to a night at the ballet. Membership costs $5 a month. But early on, LinkUp hit a snag. Events were being ruined and hosts disappointed by people who didn't show up. Flakes. So Taisdeal instituted an "accountability system" using the database to chart patterns of flakiness. If a person RSVPs for an event but doesn't show up 50 percent of the time, his or her "reliability threshold" dips. LinkUp hosts set the reliability threshold requirement for guests, which varies depending on the type of event. For dinner at a restaurant, say, where an exact head count is more crucial than for a picnic in the park, guests can sign up only if they have a reliability index of 50 percent or more. By changing their behavior over time, people can improve their ratings. "Yes, it's social engineering," admitted Taisdeal, with a laugh. "But people make clearer decisions because of the consequences." In fact, it was after the accountability system was installed that LinkUp really took off, he said, because members gained confidence that events would succeed. Driven to help raise the level of integrity in the culture, Taisdeal has some major projects -- "still in the embryonic stage" -- that would allow people to use the accountability system in areas such as job hunting and dating. What remains to be seen is if integrity, one of the most complex aspects of human character, can ever really be mapped or changed by technology. At the Commonwealth Club event, the accountability system got mixed notices from three men in their 30s. The first was a fan. "I've tried to set up events with Yahoo Group and Friendster, and I'm lucky if I can get a 50 percent turnout -- so I appreciate what you do," he said. "I find it offensive," said another, who objected to having his character judged by his party attendance. "It sounds like a police state, like the Stasi in East Germany," chimed in a third. Taisdeal remained undeterred. "There are a lot of people who are very happy with LinkUp," he said. "It's a supervised system, with rules. It's not a democracy." ©2006 San Francisco Chronicle