Abstract
I approach the philosophical analyses of the phenomenon of trust vis-à-vis online communication beginning with an overview from within the framework of computer-mediated communication (CMC) of concerns and paradigmatic failures of trust in the history of online communication. I turn to the more directly philosophical analyses of trust online by first offering an introductory taxonomy of diverse accounts of trust that have emerged over the past decade or so. In the face of important objections to the possibility of establishing and fostering trust in online environments—objections that emerge especially from the perspective of virtue ethics and phenomenological approaches to how we know and navigate the world as embodied beings—I then take up three major arguments in recent work in favor of the possibilities of trust online, followed by three vicious circles that run counter to more optimistic views. I close with a summary of some additional reasons for optimism regarding trust online, followed by a final question that emerges out of recent CMC research on social networking sites that poses, I argue, fundamental challenges indeed to how we understand and may foster and experience trust online.
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Notes
Specifically, Taddeo finds that for human agents’ experience of trust—in her example, whether or not to trust a bank to pay one’s bills automatically—she must develop a very general account of trust, one that succeeds, in my view, in part because of what it does not do: “This definition nowhere specifies criteria for the assessment of trustworthiness or the benefits of trust or e-trust in absolute terms” (in press). In my view, such criteria escape even the best rational/computational accounts of trust in part because trust entails phronesis, the practical or prudential form of ethical judgment that works from the particular to the general. Space here prevents a more complete and careful account of phronesis—but it may be useful to point out that our learning phronesis appears to be deeply interwoven with our experience and knowledge as embodied creatures (cf. Dreyfus 2001; Ess 2005, 172f., ftn.4, 179). This experience and knowledge are highlighted in the phenomenological and neurological emphases represented here in the work of Vallor (2009) and Stuart (2008).
In their more extensive overviews of various efforts to realize democratic debate and dialogue online, both Thorseth (2008) and Stromer-Galley and Wichowski (2010) conclude that online venues are not generally realizing their potentials for democratization, especially as construed along Habermasian lines—but the reasons involved here, e.g., “the daily me” (fragmentation), problems with “noise” (too many voices, too little time), and consumer-oriented media consumption, shopping, etc., do not emphasize first of all the difficulties of establishing trust online. I will return to the concern with consumption and commodification, however, in the closing section below.
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Acknowledgments
Much of this work began with a faculty/PhD student workshop on “Trust and Virtual Worlds,” co-organized with May Thorseth (Norwegian University of Science and Technology [NTNU], Trondheim, Norway, March 9–13, 2009); many chapters subsequently developed out of the workshop will appear, as noted in the text, in an anthology co-edited with May Thorseth, Trust and Virtual Worlds: Contemporary Perspectives (Peter Lang in press). An early version of the paper was delivered as a workshop presentation for the conference “Trusting the New: Trust and Time in Context—Anthropology and Philosophy in Dialogue,” Aarhus University, 24–25, 2009. I am profoundly grateful to workshop participants and authors for their work and inspiration, and to Mariarosaria Taddeo in particular for her kind invitation to develop these materials further.
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Ess, C.M. Trust and New Communication Technologies: Vicious Circles, Virtuous Circles, Possible Futures. Know Techn Pol 23, 287–305 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12130-010-9114-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12130-010-9114-8