Introduction

One view of cyberspace is that it is made up of technology: personal computers, the routers that support the Internet, huge data centers, and the like. Another view is that cyberspace is made up of people: people who interact over the Internet; people who run the Internet and the data centers; people who regulate, invest, set standards, and do all the other actions that make up the experience of cyberspace. The latter view is probably the more relevant; technology is only the foundation.

If cyberspace were only technology, we might properly ignore issues of trust. We might ask whether we have confidence that the technology will function as intended, and our everyday experience tells us when that confidence might be misplaced. But to the extent that cyberspace is made up of people, we should ask whether issues of trust are important in the proper functioning of cyberspace. I argue that trust is central in many ways.

Trust, as I use the term, is a relationship between trustor and trustee in which the trustor is willing to assume that the trustee will act in the best interest of the trustor. This does not mean that the trustor can predict exactly what the behavior of the trustee will be, but that the trustee will use judgment and intelligence to restrict the range of actions undertaken. One who is not trustworthy may be malicious or simply inattentive, incompetent, or in an unsuited role: trust is usually accepted with respect to a particular role.