Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Technology And Trust, Albert Borgmann

Philosophy Faculty Publications

We think of trust as the animating spirit of a prosperous society. Trust makes promises workable, credit extendable and contracts reasonable. If you try to make trust dispensable through a system of fail-safe controls, you end up with a stultifyingly cumbersome apparatus, and the cost of handling things would exceed the price of producing them. If there is no trust at all in the person who is buying a 50p ballpoint pen, you have to frisk the person to make sure he or she is not planning a hold-up, ascertain their identity by checking their fingerprint or retina, get at …