Trust, Computing, and Society


New book edited by Richard H. R. Harper: “The Internet has altered how people engage with each other in myriad ways, including offering opportunities for people to act distrustfully. This fascinating set of essays explores the question of trust in computing from technical, socio-philosophical, and design perspectives. Why has the identity of the human user been taken for granted in the design of the Internet? What difficulties ensue when it is understood that security systems can never be perfect? What role does trust have in society in general? How is trust to be understood when trying to describe activities as part of a user requirement program? What questions of trust arise in a time when data analytics are meant to offer new insights into user behavior and when users are confronted with different sorts of digital entities? These questions and their answers are of paramount interest to computer scientists, sociologists, philosophers, and designers confronting the problem of trust.

  • Brings together authors from a variety of disciplines
  • Can be adopted in multiple course areas: computer science, philosophy, sociology, anthropology
  • Integrated, multidisciplinary approach to understanding trust as it relates to modern computing”

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and overview Richard Harper
Part I. The Topography of Trust and Computing:
2. The role of trust in cyberspace David Clark
3. The new face of the internet Thomas Karagiannis
4. Trust as a methodological tool in security engineering George Danezis
Part II. Conceptual Points of View:
5. Computing and the search for trust Tom Simpson
6. The worry about trust Olli Lagerspetz
7. The inescapability of trust Bob Anderson and Wes Sharrock
8. Trust in interpersonal interaction and cloud computing Rod Watson
9. Trust, social identity, and computation Charles Ess
Part III. Trust in Design:
10. Design for trusted and trustworthy services M. Angela Sasse and Iacovos Kirlappos
11. Dialogues: trust in design Richard Banks
12. Trusting oneself Richard Harper and William Odom
13. Reflections on trust, computing and society Richard Harper
Bibliography.