Who is the author of Who Can You Trust??

Rachel Botsman is the author of Who Can You Trust?

Society & Culture

Who Can You Trust? Book Summary - Who Can You Trust? Book explained in key points

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Who Can You Trust? summary

Name: Who Can You Trust?
Rating: 4.4 (69 reviews)
Author: Rachel Botsman

Rachel Botsman

How Technology Brought Us Together – and Why It Could Drive Us Apart

4.4 (69 ratings)

19 mins

Brief summary

Who Can You Trust? by Rachel Botsman examines the erosion of trust in modern society and offers insights into how technology, cultural shifts, and other factors affect our ability to trust institutions, organizations, and individuals.

Topics

Anthropology Cryptocurrency

Table of Contents

Who Can You Trust?
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Take a tour through the history of trust.

Go online or scan a newspaper and you’re more than likely to read about the “disruptive” technologies that are currently changing our world. Indeed, on a daily basis, we use services provided by online companies whose names have become synonymous with such changes. So what do Uber, Airbnb and Alibaba have in common, and where did they come from?

Rachel Botsman has a startling answer. In her view, they’re each the result of a revolution in the way trust functions in our society.

These blinks follow the evolution of trust. They take us on a journey from when trust only existed between small, tight-knit communities through to industrialized societies in which trust was a top-down affair between big institutions and citizens. Finally, we’ll arrive at our present age of horizontal trust between networked peers, armed with blockchains and rating systems.

On the way, you’ll find out

how Maghribi traders developed an original rating system in the eleventh century;
why millions of us are happy to get into a stranger’s car; and
how blockchain technology is set to revolutionize trust in the future.

Trust opens the door to the world.

What is trust? It’s an everyday word we all know and use, but it’s a surprisingly tricky concept to pin down. We each have slightly different interpretations. Look closely enough, though, and you’ll find that virtually every definition shares a common theme.

Trust opens the door to the world and expands our horizons.

Take an average day. Without trust, it would be difficult to leave your home, let alone buy something from a stranger online. And imagine getting on a plane if you didn’t trust its ability to stay aloft. From using a credit card on eBay to flying somewhere for a holiday, our complex, interconnected world depends on trust at every turn.

But trust is a two-way street. That’s why we’re most likely to trust others when we know that they have more to lose than to gain by betraying our trust.

A good example of this is the trust system developed by Maghribi traders in the eleventh century and still used in the business world today.

The traders faced a conundrum. They wanted to ship their goods to the profitable but distant markets of Sicily. That meant they had to use intermediaries. How could they make sure they weren’t being fleeced?

The Maghribi entrepreneurs hit on a simple but effective solution. If their partners in Sicily showed themselves to be dishonest, they would be excluded from the traders’ business networks and lose out on future opportunities. By developing a system that cut both ways, the traders established a foundation of trust that allowed them to carry out their business and avoid being cheated.

What the traders had invented was a rating system. It was a revolutionary innovation that is used to this day in the business world.

And its modern version, as we’ll see in the following blinks, is becoming ever more important.

The third trust revolution in human history is underway.

Trust is – and always has been – the thing that makes the business world tick. But trust itself has changed throughout human history.

Before our own age, there were two distinct periods. These can be defined as the age of local trust and the age of institutional trust.

Institutional trust was never likely to survive the age of digitalization.

We are increasingly moving away from institutional trust. Shocks like the 2008 financial crisis have amplified skepticism about the established institutions at the heart of our societies. The greed and chronic malpractice of the institutions that we trusted with our money became plain to see once the market crashed.

But the crash of 2008 expedited a process that was already underway. Technological change had been sapping confidence in institutions for some time prior to the financial crisis.

The sharing economy is both a reflection and a product of distributed trust.

The sharing economy has changed the way we do business. The most successful representatives of the new ethos have broken with the old model of traditional outlets (selling goods and services) and instead focussed on connecting customers with peers online.

Take Uber and Airbnb. Both companies allow their users to generate income from otherwise unused assets like cars and spare rooms by connecting them with their peers. Their success speaks for itself. Uber is now worth $68 billion and is larger than established multinational giants such as Deutsche Bank and FedEx. Airbnb is the second-largest hospitality company in the world, with a worth of $31 billion.

We become more trustworthy when we know we’re being rated by our peers.

Today’s technologies mean that betraying someone’s trust for short-term gain has negative long-term consequences.

That’s because we all leave a reputation trail behind us. Other people can see how trustworthy we are by following our trails, just as we can see how trustworthy they are by following theirs.

China plans to implement a national “trustworthiness” rating system for all citizens by 2020.

Rating systems are currently restricted to specific platforms. But what if your whole life was subject to such a system? China is currently implementing a policy that will make that eerie possibility an unsettling reality for all its citizens by 2020.

The Chinese Social Credit System (SCS) already exists, though it’s currently still optional. Its task is to rate all Chinese citizens and appraise their overall trustworthiness.

Blockchain technology will revolutionize the way we trust one another.

We’ve all heard of blockchain technology, but what exactly is it? And what does it have to do with trust?

Blockchain technology provides a record of every action undertaken by anything using the technology; it’s a kind of digital ledger in which the history of something is permanently stored.

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What is Who Can You Trust? about?

Who Can You Trust (2017) analyzes the past, present and future of trust. Rachel Botsman addresses the most pressing questions of our networked age, asking why it is that we now trust complete strangers with the most intimate aspects of our lives. She also explores how new technologies like blockchains will continue to revolutionize our relationship with others.

Who Can You Trust? Review

Who Can You Trust? (2017) explores how trust is evolving in the digital age and why it's more important than ever. Here's why this book is worth reading:

With thought-provoking insights and research, it delves into the complexities of trust in an age of technology, challenging our beliefs and forcing us to rethink.
It offers compelling examples and case studies that demonstrate the impact of trust on relationships, institutions, and businesses, making it relevant and applicable to our daily lives.
The book's accessible language and compelling storytelling keep readers engaged, transforming potentially dry subject matter into an engaging exploration of trust.

Best quote from Who Can You Trust?

Trust is a confident relationship with the unknown.

—Rachel Botsman

Who should read Who Can You Trust??

Anyone fascinated by the big ideas that make the world tick
People interested in the cutting edge of technological change
Futurologists burning to know what our societies will look like in ten years

About the Author

Rachel Botsman is a writer and speaker whose work has been published in Wired, the New York Times and Harvard Business Review as well as many other publications. Her TED talks have been viewed more than four million times and are available in 29 languages. Botsman is also the author of What’s Mine Is Yours.

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