The Fate of Online Trust in the Next Decade
Many experts say lack of trust won’t hinder increased public reliance on the internet. Some expect trust to grow as tech and regulatory changes arise; others think it will worsen or maybe change entirely.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Many experts say lack of trust won’t hinder increased public reliance on the internet. Some expect trust to grow as tech and regulatory changes arise; others think it will worsen or maybe change entirely.
A number of participants in this canvassing noted that humans possess an inherent optimism bias when measuring risk versus reward. While they understand that connected platforms and devices can lead to negative outcomes, they figure the bad stuff will happen to someone else or, if they suffer in some regard, they will still land on […]
Despite broad concerns about cyberattacks, outages and privacy violations, most experts believe the Internet of Things will continue to expand successfully the next few years.
Some 15% of these respondents are not at all confident that the Internet of Things will be safe enough to command trust among users. They argue that a number of the problems mentioned elsewhere in this report will be severe enough that some people will retreat from super-connected life. They particularly stress how key systems […]
Trust is embedded in many things that foster relationships and transactions. Money is the prime example of a trust-infused artifact. People exchange it for other things of value because their governments say that their currencies are “backed” by the authority of those governments and, often, other governments. In days of yesteryear, money was tied to […]
Roughly nine-in-ten Democrats say news media criticism keeps leaders in line (sometimes called the news media’s “watchdog role”), while only about four-in-ten Republicans say the same.
A large share of these experts wrote about the ways in which solutions might be found to mitigate the risks posed by highly connected life. Some expressed hopes that market forces might punish Internet of Things creators if they do not build safe and reliable products and come to an agreement on appropriate system standards. […]
A noteworthy share of these respondents focused on the enormous systemic and structural realities that confront those trying to plan for the future of work and workers. Many of the least hopeful in this expert canvassing look into the future and see a world where most of the work is done by robots and automated […]
The internet was not built with trust-building in mind, and about a quarter of these experts predicted that there are a number of threats that will be hard to defeat. Some spoke of the role of criminals and trolls. Others referred to corporate behavior and governments’ motives leading to the privacy invasions, surveillance and data […]
A unique study of Americans’ online news habits over the course of a week provides a detailed window into how Americans learn about current events in the digital age.
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