Trade, Trust and Information Power - In Transition to Sustainability

Trade, Trust and Information Power. Lessons Learned from Online Trade. This is a book about how trust can guide the development of information infrastructure. The Author, Tove Engvall, also suggests ways forward for the financial markets, pointing towards client-oriented e-financial services. Change is happening faster and faster, both in the natural world with climate change and global eco-system transformations, and in the digital world, and online interconnectedness. This challenges old ways of doing things, at all levels of society, and also shapes relations of power. In the end it also raises questions for all of us about what type of life and society we want on this planet, and what is considered valuable. Results based on an ethnographic study indicate that individuals are very vulnerable in a global digital marketplace, and the means for trustworthiness at different levels are insufficient, exposing individuals to high risks and uncertainty of who is actually to trust. One important conclusion is that to be able to work for the benefit of many, such a system needs to ensure trust. And that digital records and archives have a crucial role in realizing this.