Our new video explains how to trust on the Internet – by remixing already familiar proverbs
by Nayantara Ranganathan
“Don’t take icecream from a stranger.”
Children from many parts of the world hear versions of this. Depending on the context, it can be a message honing trust, a message encouraging suspicion of people who are different from oneself, and so on. Whether or not we agree with these messages, one thing is certain: we have a lot of language that teaches us about trust: how to not trust too much, or too little.
What does the equivalent on the Internet look like? We created a new video to help you answer this question.
When it comes to matters of new technologies, the overwhelming message is: trust technology to solve that for you. But it is important to take apart the hype from the actual capabilities of the technologies, to make sure that they do not cause more harm than benefit.
For this, we don’t all have to understand complex technological developments, but simply need new storytelling around trust and technology, to collectively have some healthy skepticism. So we explore using old proverbs and idioms to talk about the current debates on technology.