Piotr Cofta 
Trust, Complexity and Control 
Confidence in a Convergent World

An increasing reliance on the Internet and mobile communication has
deprived us of our usual means of assessing another party’s
trustworthiness. This is increasingly forcing us to rely on
control. Yet the notion of trust and trustworthiness is
essential to the continued development of a technology-enabled
society.

Trust, Complexity and Control offers readers a single,
consistent explanation of how the sociological concept of
‘trust’ can be applied to a broad spectrum of
technology-related areas; convergent communication, automated
agents, digital security, semantic web, artificial intelligence,
e-commerce, e-government, privacy etc. It presents a model of
confidence in which trust and control are driven and limited by
complexity in one explanatory framework and demonstrates how that
framework can be applied to different research and application
areas. Starting with the individual’s assessment of trust,
the book shows the reader how application of the framework can
clarify misunderstandings and offer solutions to complex
problems.

The uniqueness of Trust, Complexity and Control is
its interdisciplinary treatment of a variety of diverse areas using
a single framework.

Sections featured include:

* Trust and distrust in the digital world.

* The impact of convergent communication and networks on
trust.

* Trust, economy and commerce.

* Trust-enhancing technologies.

Trust, Complexity and Control is an invaluable source of
reference for both researchers and practitioners within the Trust
community. It will also be of benefit to students and lecturers in
the fields of information technology, social sciences and computer
engineering.

Table of Content

Foreword.

Introduction.

Part I. Confidence: trust and control.

1. Setting the scene.

2. The model of confidence.

3. Measuring confidence.

4. Comparative analysis of the model of confidence.

5. The dynamics of confidence.

6. The dark side.

Part II. Confidence and technology.

7. Impact of digital technology.

8. Digital security.

9. Confidence and networks.

10. Attacks on confidence.

11. Trust Enhancing Technologies.

Part III. Confidence in a convergent world.

12. Convergence and confidence.

13. Confidence creation in e-business.

14. Privacy and authentication.

15. Trust management.

16. Economy of confidence.

Index.

About the author

Piotr Cofta works for British Telecom as a Chief Researcher, Security and Trust in the Mobility Research Centre. He is responsible for research in convergent security and trust, specifically in identity and privacy. Previously he has worked for many years for Nokia and more recently for Media Lab Europe, concentrating on device security and transactional trust. His research interest includes technical and social aspects of security and trust with special focus on opportunities in convergent environment and mobile commerce. He received his Ph D in computer science from the University of Gdansk, Poland. He is a member of IEE and IEEE.