Setting the Scene. Basic Concepts

Let us set the scene. There is Alice and Bob. We do not know what they think (unless they decide to tell us, but then – should we trust them?), but we can observe how they behave.

We know that Alice would like the future to be good to her. This may include the successful completion of what she is doing right now, her long-term plans or possibly the lack of damaging events in the near future. If we place Alice at the pedestrian crossing, she may simply want to cross the street safely - maybe not a particularly great achievement, but sometimes one that may be hard to achieve.

When Alice leaves the pavement and starts crossing the street, she become vulnerable. Every driver can easily hurt her, potentially in a way that will permanently and negatively impair her life - with little physical consequences to the driver or to his car. She is aware of this, and - seeing that the car driven by Bob is approaching - she must decide whether she is confident enough that the driver will slow down and let her walk across.

This is the image we start with: Bob behind the wheel, Alice at the pavement, considering whether she should cross the street or not. For that moment, the relationship between Alice and Bob emerges. In a second it will be gone, but currently Bob becomes an inseparable part of Alice's future. His actions (or inactions) may significantly impact on her life.

This book is about moments like this, moments that we experience throughout all our life: vulnerable to decisions of others yet dependent on them. Banks considering mortgage application, managers deciding about promotion, government regulating taxes, doctor suggesting a treatment... the list is very long. Should we be confident that their decisions will benefit our future?

This book concentrates on what can be called Alice's transactional assessment of confidence: the process that may eventually lead her to rely on Bob, in anticipation that Bob will support her goals. Such assessment is clearly transactional: Alice may be confident about Bob at certain moments in time (e.g. not on Friday night) and may do it only regarding certain subjects (e.g. not when it comes to classical philosophy). Her assessment of confidence within the scope of one transaction does not determine her assessment within other transactions. Her assessment is not necessary binary, as she may engage into the transaction at different levels.

Another interesting aspect of this relationship is Alice's willingness and ability to improve Bob, her long-term relational decision about confidence. We will see later that Bob may behave in a desired manner because this is in his nature or because he has been forced to behave. Further, his behaviour may be altered by the fact that Alice is confident about him. From the long-term perspective, Alice may be sometimes better off if she spends some effort on strengthening Bob's good nature, rather than using enforcement tools on him. In the future, it will save her hassle (and the cost) of dealing with the battery of instruments designed to coerce Bob.

As Alice and Bob are increasingly interacting through and with a help of digital media, another concept becomes important. Trust management can be understood as technical replication, processing and enforcement of confidence that already exists in the social world. For example, if Alice is confident about Bob, she may be willing to give him a token that can be verified later by an infrastructure managed by Alice. Here the token becomes a technical representation of a confidence that existed at certain moment between Alice and Bob. The notion of trust management will be particularly important if we assume that neither Alice not Bob must necessarily be humans.