We should all strive to create and enjoy the pleasures of a trusting environment. However, a different reality often sets in and then we are faced with the challenge of creating a trusting environment by example, collaboration and empowerment, thereby demonstr-ating the power of a trusting organization. Ultimately, trust is a choice.

In the early days of Knowledge Management, the then-Director of the IBM-sponsored Institute for Knowledge Management, Larry Prusak, stated passionately again and again to his colleagues and customers, that knowledge flows with trust. He energetically encouraged face-to-face interactions as a way to build relationship and trust. Now - some 15 years later - we've moved into a new interconnected world and ushered in a new way of working and living, which rises and falls at the whim of exploding technology, information and knowledge. More than ever, we need to be able to trust our business partners and information and knowledge sources. In this paper we will first clearly define the commonly used terms of information, knowledge, learning, and trust. We then look at information and knowledge in relationship to trust before exploring trust of self, the importance of context, trust and the other, and trust in the organization. Finally, we offer a new way of thinking about virtual trust in a global world before concluding with several thoughts.

Embracing Stonier's description of information as a basic property of the Universe - as fundamental as matter and energy - we take the amount of information to be a measure of the degree of organization expressed by any non-random pattern or set of patterns. The order of a system is a reflection of the information content of the system. Knowledge exists in the human brain in the form of stored or expressed neuronal patterns that may be activated and reflected upon through conscious or unconscious thought. From this process, neuronal patterns are created that may represent understanding, meaning and the capacity to anticipate (to various degrees) the potential results of actions. Thus it is not just information that characterizes knowledge, but the relationships or associations (in space and time) among that information. Through this process of semantic association (or complexing), the mind is continuously growing, restructuring the physiology of the brain, creating increased organization (information), and by doing so, changing.

Effective Executive Magazine, World of Information and Knowledge, Neuronal Patterns, Knowledge Informing, Information Exchange, Regurgitate Information, Decision Maker, Emotional Tags, Social Neuroscience, Physical Mechanisms, Learning Process, Economic Prosperity, Cultural Environment, Virtual Social Networking, Global Connectivity, Social Media, Biological System.