IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2021 - 11

that if we set up a situation where selfishness is the
rational choice, we will see selfishness. What Ostrom
observed is that people (or communities of people)
can make up political meta-games to ensure that
cooperation becomes the rational choice; and no
surprise, we will see cooperation.
Bryson defines trust as " a relationship between
peers in which the trusting party, while not knowing
for certain what the trusted party will do, believes
any promises being made. " This is a carefully chosen
and worded definition of trust which cleverly
suggests that it only operates amongst peers, and
only on promises. However, nothing can be farther
from the truth. There is little doubt that humans are
not the peers of their animal companions, and yet
trust exists between human and, for instance, a service
dog-even to the extent that the dog is trusted
by the human not to lead them onto a road where
there is an oncoming car (we would venture to suggest
that such behavior is pretty trusting). Moreover,
the relationship is notably bidirectional. But there's
more since no promises were ever made by either
party-if there were, such promises would not be
understood in any case, so the point of whether any
were made at all is moot. The definition is not just
problematic because it glosses over and cherry-picks
the situations it wants. It is problematic because it
basically implies human exceptionalism. This is not
a simple problem, and it refuses to accept the possibility
that non-human trusters and trustees could
exist. We do not subscribe to this point of view.
Instead, let us return to a definition of trust that is
more widely accepted and more inclusive. We are
used to using Gambetta's definition, which reads:
" trust (or, symmetrically, distrust) is a particular
level of the subjective probability with which an
agent assesses that another agent or group of agents
will perform a particular action, both before he can
monitor such action (or independently of his capacity
ever to be able to monitor it) and in a context
in which it affects his own action " [15, p. 217]. This
generally suffices: one can define " agent " in many
ways, for instance, but if it is too restrictive, or perhaps
not restrictive enough, depending on who
is looking at it, we refer the interested reader to
[16, ch. 3] for a more thorough examination of the
phenomenon from different points of view.
A more acceptable definition of trust allows a
more inclusive acceptance of who or what can
use it. It does not preclude animals, for instance.
June 2021
Neither does it exclude machines. This is important.
In the 1990s, Reeves and Nass carried out research
into how people (humans) perceive
technology
(media) [17]. The experiments had to do with the
way in which people interacted with a computer.
They showed that humans tended to see technology
as a social actor and behaved in ways that would be
socially appropriate toward the technology. This was
despite being told that they were interacting with
a computer.
Beyond defining what trust is, it might be even
more insightful to inquire instead what trust does.
And apart from short-cutting the complexity of decision-making
in n-player, m-action games (NP-complete,
i.e., there is no known way to compute a
solution in polynomial time), it is also a process
involving the social construction of a conceptual
resource (trustworthiness) that enables a community
to solve collective action problems through
common knowledge.
We would in fact argue that there are two aspects
of trustworthiness: one is the individual innate one,
that if you believe there is a rule, and that others'
expectations are that you will follow the rule, then
you will follow the rule. This is what makes, or should
make, someone trustworthy; but the socially constructed
aspect of trustworthiness is the perception
of others as to whether or not this is the case. The
innate trustworthiness and the socially constructed
trustworthiness of an individual might differ.
However, this process is vulnerable. As Edward
Bernays wrote in Propaganda, and it is worth quoting
at length [18, p. 9]:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of
the organized habits and opinions of the masses
is an important element in a democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of
society constitute an invisible government which is
the true ruling power of our country....We are governed,
our minds are molded, our tastes formed,
our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never
heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which
our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers
of human beings must cooperate in this manner if
they are to live together as a smoothly functioning
society.... In almost every act of our daily lives,
whether in the sphere of politics or business, in
our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we
are dominated by the relatively small number of
11
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2021
