Should we trust what we read?

Due diligence versus brand loyalty

TL;DR : human attentiveness has dwindled! The pace of modern cybernetic life saturates our cognitive faculties and leaves us unwary of concealed intentions, even vulnerable to suggestion. Once upon a time, we could take our time over breakfast with a newspaper or magazine and ponder the long and the short of the news: or we might settle with a good book, or listen to a debate, and enjoy its subtle delights. Today readers complain if any message exceeds “elevator pitch” level or “Internet meme” status. This leaves a nagging feeling that we are unsure of whom or what to trust. Seeing how kids multitask in everything on their smartphones should make us suspicious of their actual level of attention in any one thing. We’re still learning how to navigate this new reality.

The trust project

In previous articles about trust, I looked at how patterns of regular activity in online services could be used to gauge predictability in keeping promises: timing of responses is one way of gauging behaviour in a quantifiable way, when you have promises implicit in a service interaction. But there was an aspect of assessing promise keeping that was missing. That’s what I want to think more about here.

Intent is signalled through promises, and measuring promise keeping is easy when it’s about simple countable actions, but some promises are more hidden from view. Trust is not only about completing tasks: it’s about what people say as…