A few accidents here and there, and you can stop a whole city. By and large, we haven't been building systems with the sensitivity to the risks that are involved at that level. If we're going to build these kinds of automatic systems that affect us so much, they have to able to tolerate the kinds of influences that are likely to come to them. If we don't do that, we won't use them. By relying on cyberspace as it exists today, we are moving from local commerce in tangible goods with neighbors that we more or less know and trust to a trade in invisible goods with people we don't know who use computer systems that we need to trust.
Computer systems have the potential to provide wonderful visibility and accountability.
Just as bank systems provide an audit trail in monthly statements, so trusted systems could provide accounting summaries. Just as political institutions back up the occasional bank failure and respond to claims of errors, so new institutions could stand behind computer systems for commerce. Creating institutions that can certify trusted systems is part of the overall challenge of enabling the information market-place to grow. Viewing trusted systems in this light makes it clear that there is important social and legal work to be done at the Internet edge.