The Seven Rules of Trust: Why It Is Today’s Most Essential Superpower
Jimmy Wales
Bloomsbury
‘Trust’: one word, five letters, a vital aspect of modern society. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales changed the landscape of knowledge when he founded the free, multilingual, online encyclopaedia in 2001.
Two decades later and we’re facing a global crises of virtual — and corporeal — deceit which adversely impacts not only the dissemination of knowledge, but also creates an environment of mistrust owing to disinformation rapidly spreading — and increasing — in a ‘post-truth’ era.
“Many years ago, when the world was still learning about this strange new thing called Wikipedia,” Wales writes in the introduction, “most people were sure it was a terrible idea. An online encyclopaedia that could be written and edited by anyone? How could readers ever be confident that its facts were facts ... The public would never trust Wikipedia. And without trust, Wikipedia would be nothing."
In The Seven Rules of Trust, described by Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, as “hopeful and practical”, Wales shares his actionable rules for building trust in business, leadership, and life. Now that’s worthy Wiki’ing!
