Can We Trust Technology?

This book examines the contemporary crisis of trust, where people’s trust in organisations and in emerging technologies is decreasing. It reconsiders dominant assumptions about trust, arguing for a shift in thinking away from motifs of trustable technology and toward motifs of trustable futures. Can We Trust Technology? examines the contemporary crisis of trust, where people’s trust in organisations and in emerging technologies is decreasing. As governments, industry organisations and research funders are investing millions in the quest to design technologies people will trust, this book asks if it is plausible to think tech workers and research designers can produce trustworthy technologies and, moreover, if it is realistic to assume everyday users of those technologies will ever truly trust them? Drawing on incisive analysis of the contemporary context and ethnographic research with those who develop and use technologies, the book reconsiders dominant assumptions about trust, arguing for a shift in thinking away from motifs of trustworthy technology and toward a vision for trusted futures. This book is for researchers, professionals and practitioners from all disciplines and professions, interested in technology, trust and futures.