My New Year's Thought on 2018 and the future:
Trust Definition: Firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something...
...in 2018 our trust in almost everything we have come to understand as 'trustworthy' will be come under scrutiny and open for examination. The rot has already started but it will be reinforced as more astonishing revaluations come to light in every aspect of our lives. Let's make a quick list of things that we may have had some trust in but will unravel further in 2018. I'll be controversial but academics, doctors, world leaders, multi-nationals, the clergy, news, your next door neigbour and even your closest friends are all going to push your understanding of trust to a new level if they haven't already.
However there is an upside with such an unprecedented surge of scandal, incompetence and down right unethical behaviour, there will be a drive by some to find ways to make trust the centre of everything and where nothing and no one can hide.
The start of a new view of trust has already started and it has come from technological roots. So what do I mean?
In 2017 President Trump has reinvented his idea of trust. He has cut out the middle man and spoken un-edited and maybe unwisely many times to the world by using Twitter. This has created massive controversy because, unfortunately, we have suddenly, or maybe not so suddenly, realised just how fallible we all are, and having a professional team of experts around at all time to filter, check, rehearse and spin information can be pretty good idea if you only have one idea that got you to the top!
Same goes for Prime Minister May, she had one idea and that was to stay in power... and when put on the spot at the party conference we saw the veil slip and a scared, worried and plainly frightened person emerge on stage. In fact this was a terrible moment for her but in hindsight it was the saviour of her administration perhaps. We saw the truth and we trusted it, and by doing so many in her party and in the general public began to trust her a little more. The foreign secretary we trust less because when his veil was lifted we saw a lazy man with so much ability just not putting the work in and actually reading the briefing notes.
But getting back to trust itself. It is not going too far to say that trust is fundamental to business. We are leaving Europe because 51% of the UK population do not trust the European Community to be fair to the UK. In a new global economy being part of a small 'club' of countries all looking inwards is perhaps a worry and the idea that if we are pushing above our weight at the top table and then Europe could become an open trading partner to the World is now a lost dream. We are now going to have to create a new 'world trade trust system' ourselves and guess what it could be that the technology to do this has already been invented and it will ensure that the UK will be incredibly successful in our new role in world trade including products services and finance. It will also mean that, Europe (EEC),even if that is still relevant, will have to grasp this new normal. The new normal will be ' World Wide Free trade'.
So what is the big idea that will be the rebirth of trust? What will ensure individuals, business, Governments become accountable and trust worthy?
Fundamental to the world so far has been the focus on technology driving innovation and enabling ideas to create wealth that trickles down, but the downside is that this has created inequality and suffering with most of the wealth in the hands of a very few. But on a positive note we we mainly have a better outcome than earlier generations. (Respecting issues in Africa and other countries which have been caused by corrupt leadership).
So can it ever be different? Well the answer is that it has to be different. For instance governments cannot exist by managing their own currencies in the same way they have done in the past. We cannot continue quantitative easing (printing money) to manipulate our world within our borders... what is a border today, just to mention one problem? (Trump!!) So how can we trust other countries when many aspects of their economies are misunderstood?
So we all understand the problem, how can we have a new border in Ireland, whose fish are they anyway, is that your rain, wind, pollution, radiation, news, celebrity, music, food, plastic bag, ocean, and so it goes it on.
But yes we are on the verge of a new trust.
This next big innovation will make the dot com boom, which went bust on the 10th March 2000, look like a small blip. The internet revolution changed the way the world communicated but it did little to decentralise power perhaps it has created an even more steep gradient to the top.
This new idea of trust will gather pace in 2018 and will be driven by today's millenniums demanding a new transparency. It will start, I believe, with the unraveling of power bases such as Google, Microsoft, Ebay, Allibaba and Facebook. They may remain as brands as we know them today, but the way they work and their transparency will be utterly changed by the introduction of a distributed block chain database functionality that will ensure, for instance, that the era of 'fake news' will end because 'news' will be verified by the users before acceptance in milliseconds using the intrinsic power of the network. But this is just the start.
This new technology will sporn hundreds of new businesses/collaborative networks and maybe a few of these new networks will unseat some of the mammoths of the past as happened in the dot comm era.
The outcomes will snow ball as every industry will embrace this new technology as they did with the Internet and within a decade we will have a new financial system based on a world standard crypto currency, smart contracts, food and drug certification and a whole new approach to safety, communications and trade where there is finally absolutely no trust required as every transaction is free to view, monitor and verify by anyone.
More importantly the way we pay taxes, fund our domestic economy will all have to change empowering people and creating a new world which will be, in effect, be a new industrial and social revolution. where AI and renewable power will lead a new approach to health care and sustainable living.
Could it happen... frankly it has to!
So finally: “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
William Shakespeare,
All's Well That Ends Well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency
For more insights into the block chain technology please read my earlier posts.