Editor’s note: Besides tracking technological advancements and innovations, our author is a Juilliard-trained musical composer. He has created a musical piece titled “Cocreate” for you to enjoy while reading this column.
We used to assume that reliability came from institutions of authority, or fromtitles, credentials, and experience. And to a certain extent, that’s still true. However, in a world that is moving faster than any single authority can track, and where trust in traditional institutions has eroded, reliability is becoming something else. It’s becoming a co-created property.
What do I mean by that? Think of reliability not as a fixed quality, but as an emergent one. Something that arises from interactions among multiple people, sources, systems, and feedback loops. Not a noun, but a verb. Not static, but dynamic. We have entered an era where distributed trust, cross-checking, and ongoing calibration are replacing the old top-down model of “this is true because I said so.” Whether it’s AI-generated content, news stories, financial predictions, health advice, or product reviews, reliability now lives in the space between contributors and consumers, between nodes in a network.
And that changes everything.
Distributed Sources, Distributed Responsibility
Here is a very concrete example. I am constantly learning how to utilize new tools and have found a way to streamline the process. The world of professional composers has converged over the last thirty years on a very finite set of tools for creating notation. If you want to create a professional caliber score, it is extremely likely that you will use one or more of these tools. Three apps are commonly used: Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico. Recently, the company that has been updating and selling Finale, the oldest of the three, has announced that it will no longer support or update it, leaving tens of thousands of composers with thousands of pages of scores stranded.
Additionally, over the last decade or so, ownership of the Sibelius product line has changed, resulting in many composers becoming disappointed with the further evolution of the product. There is a migration to Dorico underway, and this isn’t easy, as you might imagine, given that the software’s manual is nearly a thousand pages long. I have owned Dorico for several years because I knew the other two were not going to meet my needs for various reasons, but I was unwilling to invest several months just to get started, let alone become an expert, which takes years.
Then I remembered, in addition to the somewhat impenetrable manual and complicated user interface, that it had taken me several years to master Sibelius, and I had completely given up on Finale. It was time to utilize the distributed resources that had evolved over the decades. I connected a large 34-inch monitor and opened windows to not only the manual, but also simultaneously to forums, tutorials, YouTube videos, and a pair of AI large-language-models. Then I got to work trying to compose, and I discovered that by utilizing this pile of resources all at the same time, I was able to, in three very long days, get to the point where I believed I could complete an assignment. These distributed resources did not all agree, but I empirically had to determine which ones to trust and for which types of requests.
In short, I had to co-create a reliable, trustworthy, and accurate system with a large number of distributed resources that I could check against each other. This process began with extreme skepticism; I did not trust any of the resources. I was evidence-seeking and had to determine through experiment what I could trust empirically. The net result was that it took three days to accomplish what I thought would take three months. All of us can perform experiments
This conversation began for me the day I realized I was cross-checking not just facts, but entire narratives. I wasn’t just verifying if someone was right or wrong. I was checking whether what they were saying matched up with what I’d seen, read, felt, and intuited from elsewhere. I was checking for coherence, not just correctness. Contextual truth, not absolute truth.
That’s a different kind of reliability.
Take AI-generated information, for instance. It can be helpful, fast, and surprisingly insightful. But it can also be confidently wrong. That’s not a bug—it’s the nature of the system. It’s trained on distributed data, and that same distributedness is what gives it power and risk. So the answer isn’t to reject the tool, but to design distributed human systems around it. We co-create reliability with it, not just from it.
This mirrors what’s happening more broadly. Reliability isn’t in the thing itself—it’s in how we interact with it. The process of triangulating, of comparing sources, of recognizing patterns across contexts, is where reliability now lives. We become part of the mechanism that generates it.
The Reliability Loop
Here’s what that looks like in practice. You read a claim. You get curious. You check a second source, and maybe a third. You notice a contradiction, and instead of immediately discrediting one side, you ask why the contradiction exists. Was it a different time? Different conditions? Different assumptions? You factor in your lived experience, your expertise, your gut.
Now multiply that by a hundred, a thousand, a million people doing the same thing. Adding their perspectives, sharing their checks, refining their insights. That’s a distributed reliability loop. It doesn’t guarantee truth—but it increases trustworthiness through participation.
This isn’t just epistemological. It’s architectural. If our information systems, organizations, and institutions aren’t built to support this kind of interaction, they collapse under the weight of their own certainty. They break when reality shifts because they weren’t designed to adapt.
But if you build for ongoing co-creation—feedback, correction, collaboration—then you build systems that are resilient. They can flex without breaking. That’s what reliability looks like now.
Music as a Model
As a musician, this makes perfect sense. When I perform with others, the reliability of the group isn’t determined by any single player. It’s co-created in real time through listening, responding, adjusting. If someone speeds up, we either follow or resist—but we all register the change. If the groove is solid, it’s because we’re reliably relating to one another moment by moment. No metronome, no conductor. Just attention, trust, and timing.
I’ve been thinking about that model in everything I do: in technology design, in innovation workshops, even in keynote performances. You can create structures that allow for reliability to emerge without over-controlling the system. In fact, too much control kills the very thing you’re trying to foster. It’s like trying to conduct a jazz combo with a ruler.
Platforms of Participation
What we need are platforms that enable distributed coherence. Places where many perspectives can come together, not to force consensus, but to create more trustworthy pathways through uncertainty.
This applies to how we make decisions. To how we teach. To how we lead. Even to how we design software. It’s not just about accuracy anymore. It’s about participation and integration.
This is what I’m experimenting with in my own work. On my TV show, in my keynotes, in my columns, and in my professional circles, I try to create participatory reliability. Not “here’s the truth,” but “here’s a framing—what do you see?” Then we compare notes. Then we refine. The truth becomes richer, more dimensional, and—ironically—more trustworthy because it emerged through dialogue, not decree.
The Role of the Individual
But let’s not forget: distributed doesn’t mean disconnected. Each of us still has a responsibility to be a reliable node in the network. That means admitting what we don’t know. Stating our assumptions. Being open to correction. Practicing curiosity. And above all, staying engaged.
Reliability, in this new paradigm, is not something we demand. It’s something we contribute to.
And that might be the most hopeful part. Because if reliability is co-created, then even in a world full of noise and misinformation, we’re not powerless. In fact, we’re essential. Our attention, discernment, and willingness to question—and to listen—are the building blocks of collective clarity.
We become stewards of signal in a world flooded with static.
From Authority to Alignment
In the end, I don’t think we’re losing reliability. I think we’re evolving it. From a top-down directive to a bottom-up emergence. From authority to alignment. From rigid truths to flexible coherences. That’s not less reliable—it’s more resilient.
We still need expertise. We still need reference points. But we also need to be awake enough to see when the map no longer matches the terrain. And flexible enough to redraw the map with others.
That’s the art of co-creating reliability. Not a solitary pursuit, but a collective practice. A jazz ensemble, not a marching band. A conversation, not a monologue.
And we’re all invited to play.
