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One strange thing about the internet though: Maintaining Eye-contact and observing body language is critical to the formation of trust between people. And trust
by petra 9y ago
One strange thing about the internet though: Maintaining Eye-contact and observing body language is critical to the formation of trust between people. And trust is critical for business. But those capabilities are only available in the very expensive telepresence suites of CEO's and the like, and this breaks the key thing we know about information technology - that it is constantly becoming cheaper. That's a bit puzzling.
And sure this is not fully a tech/biz problem, this is also about culture, just notice how the most poverished means of communications, textual messages, became so common in our daily life, even instead of something like video conferencing.
But here's an experiment: take a few beautiful rural towns, with cheap land and fast internet. offer trustful connectivity(maybe packaged in a container form) to a few major metropolitans, and try to see if you can entice companies to participate and some knowledge workers to migrate to rural towns.
- tomjen3 9y agoTrust can be signaled in many ways. A green lock signals trust, as does logos from trusted companies. Also the expensive telepresence you are talking about is technology and technology is continually falling in price.
- petra 9y agoNot computer trust. Emotional trust. As for telepresence falling in price, I remember expensive telepresence room we're advertised as "being there" and there was specific design for eye contact and body language, but I haven't seen that yet in those cheaper "telepresence" systems.
- whatever_dude 9y agoInterestingly this "source of trust" with a person is exactly what I normally do not want in a commercial transaction. I want time and information to make a decision. For salespeople figuring you out is part of the job. Knowing how to push your buttons to upsell pays well. I can also build trust on a website. It's by selling quality stuff, in a timely manner, replacing it when needed be, etc. Actual service. That's actual trust, not being buddy buddy with a salesperson.
- petra 9y agoThat's true. Salespeople carry negative value in my eyes too. But if we're talking about work mates, that emotional trust and that human connection does carry value.
- tomjen3 9y agoI meant emotional trust. My grandparents don't even know what an URL is (they just know to google things) but even they know that if the little lock isn't green, you don't go shopping because it is not safe.
- Animats 9y agoMaintaining Eye-contact and observing body language is critical to the formation of trust between people. That creates the illusion of trust. Any successful con man, politician, or salesperson knows this.