The COVID-19 pandemic forced many, unprepared, into adopting unfamiliar digital tools. While Digital natives have thrived, The Digitally Displaced require new solutions to help them bridge the divide.
The COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst, accelerating the adoption of online tools and services at a rate rarely seen before. Sectors that were previously slow to adopt digital tools have been left unprepared, struggling to adapt during an already difficult time. This has resulted in an emergent group – ‘The Digitally Displaced’. While Digital Natives have adapted quickly to this new reality, things have not been so easy for those people and sectors who have been slower in their digital transformation.
I recently guested on the Trusted Sources podcast. I discussed the Future of Trust with host Joanne Henry. We talked about the Trust 2030 project that I lead for our client Hitachi, as well as issues around digital trust and the the global pandemic.
A heavy reliance on digital technology and systems that we don’t fully understand has eroded our digital trust. We are both concerned and confused by issues of data privacy, fake news, automated decision making and artificial intelligence. How did we get here and how can we rebuild trust?
Cast your mind back to those halcyon days of the web in its infancy. Dial-up, AOL Instant Messenger, chat rooms, Napster. Sure the connections were unreliable and download speeds pitiful but things felt optimistic. There was an excitement to being able to instantly connect with millions of other people across the globe for the first time. The early internet was a wild west, there were no rules, no established conventions of engagement, just a utopian outlook on what could be.
We happily chatted anonymously with complete strangers in chat rooms, we spent hours downloading files on Napster purporting to be our favourite songs. Large corporations were slow to enter the land grab and the gold rush was led by many independent prospectors.
That utopian optimism required very little trust from users. It was enough just to experience new things online, we didn’t expect much practical use from it. Serious e-commerce and media consumption were still a long way off.
Jump 30 years forward to the present day. That utopian optimism has all but worn off. We’ve been through a dot com bubble and now internet giants are some of the most powerful companies in the world. Those companies and many others in Silicon Valley were founded upon utopian ideals — that with the right technology and the power of the web we could improve the world. We trusted these new, youthful companies. They made our lives easier and were a welcome contrast to the sluggish, old corporations who still seemed reluctant to digital change — dinosaurs who steadfastly refused to acknowledge the meteor in the sky.
Many of these internet giants were built on the foundational principle of ‘Ask for forgiveness, not permission’. In some ways they had to be. Developments online move faster than the speed of legislation. Lawmakers are constantly playing catch up. However we are now seeing the impacts of this approach writ large and the time has finally come for these companies to ask for forgiveness.
As more of our daily lives take place online, we have become used to providing companies and platforms with our personal details. Social networks know our birth dates and relationship status, they know who’s birthday party we went to last week and how we feel about the latest elections. Retailers receive our credit card information and remember which products we like best. The benefits of enjoying a seamless online experience tend to outweigh the risks. We have come to trust whoever wants to know more about us, as long as they can offer us an easier and more personalised service.That is, until this trust is broken. Whistleblowers and data leak scandals have become a news staple. In July 2018, the department store chain Macy’s reported that credit card information of thousands of their online customers had been compromised. Are these data leaks going to irreparably damage our trust in large organisations?
Evolving Trust Since last year, Cruise Cars has been preparing to drastically change San Francisco’s ride-hailing landscape. The GM-owned car company began testing driverless cars in the area, in a bid to roll out a robo-taxi fleet by 2019. Even though these vehicles are a far cry from the flying cars many had envisioned to exist in the 21st century, this new technology has raised concerns amongst residents. Cars have been involved in incidents ranging from minor bumps to a cyclist being knocked off of their bikes. Research, however, agrees these accidents are not caused by faulty technologies, Cruise cars follow safety regulations to a T, but because the cars have to interact with (inherently flawed) humans. Yet, even the most forward-thinking person is inclined to trust a human driver more than an AI, for one because we might not understand how its algorithms work but also because a robot doesn’t use the same mechanism to make decisions as we do.
Imagine for a moment, that trust didn’t exist. Shopping online, using an app to call a cab or simply letting an electrician into your home would be impossible. The bureaucracy required to evaluate, verify, and approve every action we take, would grind our society to a halt. Instead of simplifying our lives, every new service and product would have to go through a rigorous and time-consuming authentication process. Undoubtedly, most aspects of our daily lives are, at least in part, made possible because we are able to trust the people and infrastructures around us. Trust is a fundamental mechanism in our society that provides practical shortcuts, allows for technological advances, enables collaboration and has propelled us forward economically and culturally. However this hasn’t always been the case and the amount of trust we extend to each other certainly differs across times and societies.
A Short History of Trust Trust can be defined as a “firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something”, in other words, trust is a calculated risk we take, justified by the information we are able to gather about a certain individual, institution, product or service. At the beginning of human history, when social groups were small, having faith in the people immediately around us didn’t require enormous amounts of trust. Today we are living in a globalised society that is more connected than ever and that is advancing at ever accelerating rates. It has become impossible to know everyone we interact with. In order to understand how we arrived at this point, we need to have a closer look at the way our relationship with trust evolved over time.
Summary At a time when many sectors are ripe for disruption, the publishing industry has been doubly affected. Not only is publishing itself being disrupted by new technology, media and changing consumption habits, but the advertising industry, on which it has relied for so long for a business model, is also under disruption. Failure to act quickly and foresee these changes has left publishing searching for a viable alternative model.
It’s a race to the bottom where eyeballs and clicks are the prizes. Fake news, bot-generated articles, echo chambers and walled gardens make up this new media landscape. How did we get here and how can we expect things to evolve next?
In the beginning…
When Gutenberg disrupted the scribing industry in 1440, he created the means for mass communication and paved the way for the Age of Enlightenment, the Renaissance and the scientific revolution. However, he could never have imagined the modern media landscape that we now inhabit.
While the printing press has benefited from improvements and technological advances over the years, from mechanization to digital presses, the most drastic innovation in publishing came with the advent of the World Wide Web. Where Gutenberg had made the replication of content possible, the Web democratized the distribution, lowering the barrier to the access of information further than ever before.
“God, I’m looking terrible today, damn hay fever!” Elin thought as she caught her reflection in the unresponsive black screen. “Just my luck, I probably won’t even be able to pay for breakfast!” Elin stared blankly into the camera above the kiosk display, hoping desperately that it would confirm facial recognition, she just needed to grab her coffee and dash to her meeting.
She rubbed her bloodshot eyes and widened her gaze. She relaxed as the familiar ‘thumbs up’ emoji appeared on screen to confirm her payment.
