<nettime> questions on trust

[Balazs Bodo via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Dear nettime, 

I know it is not commeilfaut to post CFPs to this list, yet, the topic (trust) is something which I would like to somehow get this community's feedback on. 

In short, we are organizing an event to track the dynamics of trust in social relations as a result of the reintermediation of our trust relationships by fundamentally untrustworthy technological and other institutional actors.
We talk a lot about the politics of tech, and various aspects of digitisation's transformative effects on various aspects of life. There is also a lot of ink being spilled on trust, but as in the growing distrust in society, or the trustworthiness of our digital tools. Our ambition is bring these threads together, and some more.

At the end of 90's there has been a boom in the theoretical literature on risk and trust. Giddens, Luhman, and most notably Beck has been developing trust and risk related theories in face of the ecological, biological, chemical, nuclear threats posed by specific technologies, and the configurations of late modernity. Our argument is that we need to revisit these theories and update them in face of the last three decades of digital technology developments. We face new uncertainties, new harms, and we have new tools of objectification and quantification to translate those into risks, and some forms of coordinated expectations about the future. In the meanwhile, we witness the tribalization and fragmentation of our communities, partly due to the rapid breakdown of societal trust producing mechanisms and institutions: science, serious journalism, public education, expertise, transparent and accountable public administration, or supranational institutions, such as the WTO or the UN. In face of planetary scale polycrises, these dynamics are somewhat understandable: nation states are unprepared and unequipped to address in a meaningful ways the problems that originate from, and have a solution beyond the scale of the nation state can act.

The only planetary scale actors left are the private tech companies. Trust requires some form of societal level of consensus about the future(s), and the ways to achieve them. Tech companies are both unable and apparently unwilling to produce such consensus, and instead they produce dissensus, or in the case of AI tech, nonsense. Which leaves us with the questions: how does digital innovation shape trust in the digital society? What are the dynamics that shape trust relations vis-à-vis other people, institutions, technologies, etc.? How do the different components of trust change and transform due to digitization: the circumstances of the one who trusts, the characteristics of the one to be trusted, the environment in which trust emerges (or not).

I'd love to raise this question with you. Also, I'd like to invite you to Amsterdam, to take part in a wider conversation. Hence the call below:

Call for Papers – Amsterdam Trust Summit 2025

Don’t miss the chance to contribute to our annual Amsterdam Trust Summit, hosted by the Trust in the Digital Society Research Priority Area, on August 28–29, 2025! 

In recent years trust has become one of the central concepts in the digital society. On the one hand, the trustworthiness of our information infrastructures, such as platforms, AI, encrypted communications emerged as a central concern. On the other hand, trust relations in the digital society, such as trust in expertise, science, news, or public institutions have been fundamentally disrupted.

We are at a critical juncture, where these two challenges meet. There is no rightly vested trust in the digital society without trustworthy information-communication technologies. The Amsterdam Trust Summit invites researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and activists to come together and start building a comprehensive account of the trust dynamics in the digital society.

Contributions are welcome for various tracks:

- Theories of trust and distrust in the digital society
- Trust dynamics around emerging technologies
- Individual trusting behaviors and their impacts
- Trustworthiness safeguards of socio-technical infrastructures
- Narratives of trust and distrust in popular culture
- Innovative methods for studying trust in the information age

Submit your work and learn more here: https://digitaltrust.uva.nl/amsterdam-trust-summit-2025/call-for-papers-ats-2025.html
Deadline for submissions: February 28, 2025


Cheers,

b.-
-------------------------- 
Balazs Bodo

Professor of Information Law and Policy, with special emphasis on Technology Governance 
Institute for Information Law

Program Director
Advanced LLM in Technology Governance

University of Amsterdam


Latest publications:

Bodó, B., & Weigl, L. (in press). The frameworks of trust and trustlessness around algorithmic control technologies: A lost sense of community. In J. Goossens, & E. Keymolen (Eds.), Public Governance and Emerging Technologies: Values, Trust, and Compliance by Design


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