Searching for Trust
Blockchain Technology in an Age of Disinformation

Offers a unique archival science perspective on the potential and limitations of blockchain as a means of restoring societal trust.

Victoria L. Lemieux (Author)

9781108834872, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 April 2022

270 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.545 kg

'In Searching for Trust, Victoria Lemieux introduces a third major use of blockchain: recordkeeping and the long-term preservation of authentic records, a very important domain in an age of increasing disinformation and institutional distrust. The book explains how to relate blockchain to the long tradition of recordkeeping, as well as how to connect blockchain to the theories, principles, and methods of archival science - the science underpinning recordkeeping. Searching for Trust should be read by anyone interested in the long-term future of blockchain in a major domain that has so far not received the proper attention.' Irving Wladawsky-Berger, MIT Sloan School of Management

Searching for Trust explores the intersection of trust, disinformation, and blockchain technology in an age of heightened institutional and epistemic mistrust. It adopts a unique archival theoretic lens to delve into how computational information processing has gradually supplanted traditional record keeping, putting at risk a centuries-old tradition of the 'moral defense of the record' and replacing it with a dominant ethos of information-processing efficiency. The author argues that focusing on information-processing efficiency over the defense of records against manipulation and corruption (the ancient task of the recordkeeper) has contributed to a diminution of the trustworthiness of information and a rise of disinformation, with attendant destabilization of the epistemic trust fabric of societies. Readers are asked to consider the potential and limitations of blockchains as the technological embodiment of the moral defense of the record and as means to restoring societal trust in an age of disinformation.

Preface
Part I. Introduction: 1. What good is Blockchain?
Part II. Trust: 2. Trust and its discontents
3. From 'Trustless Trust' to 'The Great Chain of Certainty'
Part III. Disinformation: 4. Mistrust and the rise of disinformation
5. Faking it
Part IV. Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology: 6. The 'Moral Defence of the Archive'
7. From 'Archival Imaginaries' to archival realities
Part V. The Theory of the Future: 8. The 'Life-World' on ledger
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Computer security [UR], Ethical & social aspects of IT [UBJ], Law & society [LAQ], Media, information & communication industries [KNT], Information theory [GPF], Library & information sciences [GL]