Who Can You Trust? How Technology Brought Us Together – and Why It Could Drive Us Apart
If you can’t trust those in charge, who can you trust? From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. But this isn’t the age of distrust – far from it.
In this book trust expert Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history – with fundamental consequences for everyone. A new world order is emerging: we might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people travel in cars with total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. This is the age of “distributed trust”, a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules of an all-too-human relationship.
If we are to benefit from this radical shift, we must understand the mechanics of how trust is built, managed, lost and repaired in the digital age. In the first book to explain this new world, Botsman provides a detailed map of this uncharted landscape – and explores what’s next for humanity.
Reviews
A timely and accessible framework for understanding what trust is, how it works, why it matters and how it is evolving. It is an important primer to the obstacles and opportunities we face as a society if we are to repair and redefine trust across socioeconomic, political and cultural divides. The stakes are high.
– Rebecca MacKinnon ― Washington Post
WATCH: We’ve stopped trusting institutions and started trusting strangers
