Who Can You Trust?: How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart by Rachel Botsman. This was a very interesting book from a number of perspectives: How can you earn or establish trust; Why we have lost trust in our institutions (government and the press); How can you build apps and user interfaces that are “trusted” by users (hint: make them similar enough to something they already like and trust). Some quotes that I thought were important below:

Fall out from the panama papers: “The feeling of disillusionment that followed the leak wasn’t just about money; it was about fairness and equality. Why did the wealthy, powerful and elite get to play by different rules? The revelation left the social contract in tatters; it destroyed the tacit understanding that we all work hard, pay our taxes and are ‘in this together’..The message is clear; if you are rich and powerful you can break the rules, as long as it makes a lot of money. ”

“So why is trust in so many elite institutions collapsing at the same time? There are three key, somewhat overlapping, reasons: Inequality of accountability (certain people being punished for wrongdoing while others get a pass); twilight of elites and authority (the digital age is flattening hierarchies and eroding faith in experts and the rich and powerful); and segregated echo chambers (living in our cultural ghettoes and being deaf to other voices).

Trust in products: “People don’t want something truly new, they want the familiar done differently…. It was only recently I realized that that is exactly how I think about trust. Specifically, for us to trust a new idea, we need bridges that are easy to find and to cross. The unknown needs to be reduced just enough that our mind goes, “I get this, It’s kind of like…..We have to put the strange on the inside and the rice on the outside. “

Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3hOmVf4