Technology and Trust

2012 has started with many expectations about new technological developments. Just recently I was reading about the plans of Google and Apple to get into the interactive TV market. New TV sets would connect to the Internet and would offer programmes on demand. I am also sure we will also see more and faster mobile phones, mobile applications, cloud services and security developments in the next few years. In the UK, these will also be enhanced by the availability of information and content for the Olympics.

2011 has left us though with a feeling that not technology but our institutions, organisations, markets and society in general requires us to rethink how best we can manage them. The occupy and spring movements reflect a desire to establish new ways of communicating, deliberating and addressing pressing problems. With less to spend and invest, many organisations are also asking themselves how they can become part of the new landscape they are in. Going global seems to have been an alternative but now organisations have to look after the trees as well as the forest, something that perhaps the markets have not done so well.

For us as IS users, educators, designers or managers, the challenge starts in making sure we rebuild the trust of our audiences. This trust seems to have been eroded by the lack of appropriate responses to crises. Not only we need to 'stop', and 'reduce' what we do as we did last year, but we also need to start thinking of new ways of doing our jobs. Perhaps it is time also to re-define the core of what we do.

It was Peter Drucker in his book "The Effective Executive" of 1967 who suggested that we are all managers, and that as such we need to think of the value that we offer to our organisations and societies. We should focus on outwards contributions, those which our audiences value. With the advent and now widespread use of the Internet, these audiences have become global, but at the same time what we offer has become a commodity rather than a relationship. We might have stopped considering the importance of relationships and how we contribute to them with something valuable.

It is in relationships where we build trust not as a commodity but as an essential property of being human. It is time we think of using technology to facilitate communication to rebuild the trust that seems to have diminished with situations of crisis and also with situations of prosperity. Many would say that it is only in the former where trust suffers. But I also think that the good times can lead us to want more and get more from each other to limits that could then affect the trust we have in each other.