Technology Increases the Importance of Trust

Surrounded by all the benefits of smartphones, social media, e-commerce, and Uber-like services, it’s easy to overlook the fact that technology’s power to connect us with each other is only part of the story. And the other part – the human part – may be even more critical.

Every year it gets that much easier and more convenient to communicate and interact with each other, and as this has happened, basic human trust has assumed a more important role than ever before. Because of technology, in fact, the simple human trust that exists between interacting people has become one of the most important attributes of modern human culture. Trust is the lubricant that allows these technologies to work so efficiently.

One reason why trust has become so important, of course, is the simple increase in transparency that has come with the tsunami of interconnected social media and other electronic communications capabilities. We’ve never lived in a world quite so exposed. The negative side of transparency is that it represents an ever-escalating threat to personal privacy. But the positive side of transparency is that it makes it much more difficult to mislead, deceive, or cheat others.

Transparency increases the cost of hiding the truth. More efficient interactivity exposes truths that used to be inexpensive to hide.

It’s a cardinal principle of ethics that if something can be transparently exposed to the light of day without causing undue embarrassment then it should probably be considered ethical. However, it’s important to remember that the reverse is not true. Keeping a secret doesn’t necessarily imply anything unethical. People, businesses and governments do have legitimate reasons for keeping secrets, and sometimes secrecy is even enforced by law. If your marketing department, for instance, were to release its confidential pricing plans for a new product, tipping off your competitors, your executives could be jailed for collusion.

One of the hallmarks of any free-market economic system is that price and quality information are conveniently available to all customers. Until recently, however, information about a company’s service reputation, or about the overall customer experience at a firm, was not as conveniently available. Social media and mobile technology have revolutionized this, allowing customers quick and easy access, 24/7, to what other customers are saying about a brand or a business. Other customers’ opinions on all aspects of their relationship with a company are widely available online, and one key part of any company’s overall service reputation has to do with whether customers can expect it to act in a customer’s best interest. Is the firm really trustable?

In addition to transparency, however, trust also plays an important role in helping people deal with the burgeoning mass of information that now inundates our always-connected lives. We are all swimming in a cacophony of messages, communications, data, and opportunities to engage with others. And for most of us, trust is the single most important filter for deciding what messages or interactions deserve more of our attention. Which messages are from the most trustworthy sources? Which interactions involve the most trustworthy people? Which e-mails are likely to affect us the most or to contain the most reliable, useful information? 

If what you learn from someone else can’t be trusted, then it’s not worth making the effort to learn it. And if you yourself want to have any kind of an influence with someone else, then that someone has to believe that what you are communicating to them is trustworthy. Being trustworthy in the eyes of another is the only way that your own perspectives, suggestions, appeals, or demands will ever have any impact at all.

Overall, in other words, trust is probably the single most important ingredient in any human-to-human interaction or relationship, personal or commercial, and as the volume and velocity of these interactions continue to increase with technology, so the importance of trust will continue to increase, as well. Whether you’re telling or selling, cajoling or consoling, right swiping or left, what matters most is the level of trust others have in you.

So yes, we can all thank our lucky stars for the technological marvels that are wiring us together and making all sorts of new products and services available. But we should also remember that the better and more frictionless this technology becomes, the more important will be the role that trust plays, not just in how our civilization operates, but in how your own life operates, as well.

And trust must be earned, it can't be bought. There's no app for that.

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Just released, the revised and updated paperback version of Extreme Trust!