Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the fundamental misalignment between the new notions of trust proposed by the emerging digital technologies and the traditional forms of social trust people know and recognize.

Paper long abstract:

The emergence of new digital economies involves unprecedented redistribution of trust, transfer of ownership, and circulation of capital and goods in unfamiliar contexts. However, despite their global intentions, most recent digital technologies are the result of ideas and practices generated in particular cultural and economic spaces. The paper discusses the ethos brought about by mainstream digital technologies, such as blockchain, Internet of Things, and social media developed in Western countries and some of the social consequences. The paper suggests that one important source of ambiguity in terms of trust is represented by overlooking the distinction between trust in computing systems and social trust.

The paper is informed by my current research in the design and consumption of personal digital technologies in the UK. It shows that most of the emerging digital economies are based on the assumption that people need technology to ease and bring efficiency to their everyday lives and advance ideas of public good and social well-being. However, these new economies also promote contested notions of value, ownership, and trust mainly because they add new levels of abstraction to the economic and social relations in late capitalism.

The argument of the paper is that unlike the traditional forms of social trust people know and enjoy, most emerging digital economies tend to impose rather partial and / or exclusive notions of trust that are designed to work in very particular social and cultural settings. The challenge is represented by the misalignment between different concurrent forms of trust.