The internet is inverting the network of trust

The piece that always fascinated me was how technology could enable trust between total strangers over the internet to make ideas that should be risky, such as sharing your home or a ride, mainstream. And so I immersed myself in understanding how trust in the digital age really works. I wanted to understand how we place our faith in things, what influences where we place our faith, and what happens when our confidence is undermined in systems such as the financial system or political system. So I started to wonder whether the current crisis of trust in institutions and the rise of technology facilitating trust between strangers were connected in some way.

That led to what I think is the central idea of this book: that trust is shifting from institutions to individuals. I felt that this was a timely and important book to write because we’re already seeing the profound consequences of this trust shift, from the influence on the presidential election to Brexit to algorithms and bots.

A society cannot survive, and it definitely cannot thrive without trust. For a long time in history, trust has flowed upwards towards the CEOs, towards experts, academics, economists, and regulators. Now that’s being inverted — trust is now flowing sideways, between individuals, ‘friends,’ peers and strangers. There’s plenty of trust out there, it’s just flowing to different people and places.

We’re currently experiencing a trust vacuum that arises when our confidence in facts and the truth are continually called into question. That vacuum is filled by people with agendas, masterfully selling themselves as anti-establishment, and telling whatever lie plays to the anti-elitist sensibilities currently felt by people. The rise of the ‘anti-politician’ — from Nigel Farage to Donald Drumpf — is an indicator that the biggest trust shift we’ve seen in a generation is underway. In a vacuum, we become more susceptible and vulnerable to conspiracy theories, to different voices that know how to speak to people’s feelings over facts, to this new intoxicating form of transparency. Those scratching their heads because the most qualified candidate in history lost [an election] are overlooking a growing distrust of elites, the inversion of influence and rising skepticism about everything — from the validity of news to a deep suspicion of established political systems.

[I'm reminded of a history book I read once that compared Caesar and Sulla. Sulla respected institutions but not individuals, leading to a paradoxical reign of terror in which no-one was safe as Sulla tried to protect the Republic from itself. In contrast Caesar respected individuals but not institutions : there was no monstrous purging but open warfare and the ultimate death of the Republic. I'm also reading Niall Ferguson's book The Square and the Tower, in which he compares the different flows of power and information in vertical hierarchies and flatter networks.]

https://futurism.com/who-can-you-trust/