Trust in Digital World

At a time when we have information for almost everything at our fingertips, trust has expanded beyond the simple social and psychological realms. The digital world and we as its active users have developed a certain relational perspective to trust that is not an attitude or behavior from one person to another per se but is an emergent property of the relationship as a whole. Trust earlier had been categorized at three social/psychological levels: individual, interpersonal and societal. However, the rising trend of technology as a great leveler leading to increased transparency has given credence to the interesting feature of the transformative nature of trust: it's capacity to influence the behavior of both parties to the relationship as well as to change the nature of the relationship in itself. Individual trust in that regards has a direct correlation to the societal model of trust which stems from the generalized expectancy towards others based on one’s cumulative experience.

The world’s marketplace currently is being defined by collaborative cons umption. The essence of empowerment by making meaningful connections has in a sense dissolved borders and made businesses much more global than it ever was. For every share, swipe, like, review or tip that we as consumers do in a digital platform, it quantifies the trust factor of a stranger at the other end of it. This democratization of experiences using digital platform leads to a reputational score that is soon becoming the new currency for all our businesses. This social currency that establishes the virtual trust for each one of us is transforming people-powered marketplaces. Businesses of the future would be all about the smart aggregation of our reputation across platforms. With most businesses looking for omnichannel presence, soon we can envision a dystopian world like the one in Black Mirror where each one of us would represent a mere statistic and our interpersonal relationships would create the eventual societal structure.