Designing trust

The decision making process in technological development, with its underlying suppositions of certainty and controllability, contributes to fomenting social resistance to technology rather than trust among social actors. Those underlying suppositions are in disaccord with values and world views expressed by the new social movements. These movements, which form part of today’s civil society and are critical of many modern technologies, tend to hold an implicit view of technology as a social experiment under uncertainty. The tendency of the current design activity of basing design decisions on criteria, like engineering efficiency, defined as objective, is contributing to this lack of trust in the very process of decision making, which many social actors are currently demonstrating. Technology, however, depends on sustained public trust. Future technology design has therefore to take into account, as one of its basic functions, the creation of trust among actors.