  We live in an emerging hyper-connected era in which people are in contact and
interacting with an increasing number of other people and devices.
Increasingly, modern IT systems form networks of humans and machines that
interact with one another. As machines take a more active role in such
networks, they exert an in-creasing level of influence on other participants.
We review the existing literature on agency and propose a definition of agency
that is practical for describing the capabilities and impact human and machine
actors may have in a human-machine network. On this basis, we discuss and
demonstrate the impact and trust implica-tions for machine actors in
human-machine networks for emergency decision support, healthcare and future
smart homes. We maintain that machine agency not only facilitates human to
machine trust, but also interpersonal trust; and that trust must develop to be
able to seize the full potential of future technology.
