Making Sense of Blockchain Applications:A Typology for HCI

Blockchain is an emerging infrastructural technology that is proposed to fundamentally transform the ways in which people transact, trust, collaborate, organize and identify themselves. In this paper, we construct a typology of emerging blockchain applications, consider the domains in which they are applied, and identify distinguishing features of this new technology. We argue that there is a unique role for the HCI community in linking the design and application of blockchain technology towards lived experience and the articulation of human values. In particular, we note how the accounting of transactions, a trust in immutable code and algorithms, and the leveraging of distributed crowds and publics around vast interoperable databases all relate to longstanding issues of importance for the field. We conclude by highlighting core conceptual and methodological challenges for HCI researchers beginning to work with blockchain and distributed ledger technologies

FinBook: literary content as digital commodity

This short essay explains the significance of the FinBook intervention, and invites the reader to participate. We have associated each chapter within this book with a financial robot (FinBot), and created a market whereby book content will be traded with financial securities. As human labour increasingly consists of unstable and uncertain work practices and as algorithms replace people on the virtual trading floors of the worlds markets, we see members of society taking advantage of FinBots to invest and make extra funds. Bots of all kinds are making financial decisions for us, searching online on our behalf to help us invest, to consume products and services. Our contribution to this compilation is to turn the collection of chapters in this book into a dynamic investment portfolio, and thereby play out what might happen to the process of buying and consuming literature in the not-so-distant future. By attaching identities (through QR codes) to each chapter, we create a market in which the chapter can ‘perform’. Our FinBots will trade based on features extracted from the authors’ words in this book: the political, ethical and cultural values embedded in the work, and the extent to which the FinBots share authors’ concerns; and the performance of chapters amongst those human and non-human actors that make up the market, and readership. In short, the FinBook model turns our work and the work of our co-authors into an investment portfolio, mediated by the market and the attention of readers. By creating a digital economy specifically around the content of online texts, our chapter and the FinBook platform aims to challenge the reader to consider how their personal values align them with individual articles, and how these become contested as they perform different value judgements about the financial performance of each chapter and the book as a whole. At the same time, by introducing ‘autonomous’ trading bots, we also explore the different ‘network’ affordances that differ between paper based books that’s scarcity is developed through analogue form, and digital forms of books whose uniqueness is reached through encryption. We thereby speak to wider questions about the conditions of an aggressive market in which algorithms subject cultural and intellectual items – books – to economic parameters, and the increasing ubiquity of data bots as actors in our social, political, economic and cultural lives. We understand that our marketization of literature may be an uncomfortable juxtaposition against the conventionally-imagined way a book is created, enjoyed and shared: it is intended to be

Blockchain applications for a sustainable future

openLa tecnologia Blockchain promette di rivoluzionare il controllo e la gestione della catena produttiva, riducendo gli sprechi e l'impronta ecologica dei processi su cui viene applicata. Nonostante ciò, i principali sistemi che attualmente si basano su di essa - come ad esempio Ethereum per gli NFT - richiedono un consumo energetico talmente ampio da non risultare sostenibile nel futuro prossimo. L'obiettivo dell'elaborato è quindi quello di cercare un punto di convergenza tra le due facce della medaglia, fornendo una visione responsabile riguardo applicazioni future, che permetta di conciliare progresso tecnologico e sostenibilità economica e ambientale.The Blockchain technology promises to revolutionize the administration and control of the productive chain, reducing waste and carbon footprint of the processes on which it is applied. Nevertheless, the most relevant systems that are currently based on it - such as Ethereum for the NFT - require a huge energetic consumption, so that is does not seem to be sustainable in the future. The aim of this work is to find a point of contact between the two sides of the coin, presenting a responsible sight on possible future applications, that allows to conciliate technological progress with environmental and economic sustainability

Blockchain technology and initial coin offerings: a legislative & business challenge

Treballs Finals del Doble Grau d'Administració i Direcció d'Empreses i de Dret, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa i Facultat de Dret, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2018-2019, Tutor: David Avilés Herrera(eng)Technological advancement across our digital planet continues to take place at an exponential rate. Blockchain technology and distributed ledger networks are considered one of the most transformative technologies since the invention of the Internet and an important breakthrough that is changing how business is executed nowadays. There is, therefore, a clear need to understand which its uses are and how legislations are facing this worldwide invention. This Final Project presents a comprehensive analysis of blockchain technology. It will provide an overview of blockchain and cryptocurrency, before focusing on Initial Coin Offerings, a method of raising capital or participating in investment opportunities using blockchain technology. Initial Coin Offerings (or ICO’s) are said to be either a valuable innovation or a dangerous bubble. This assignment will try to depict that dilemma with the aim to clarify which alternative is more reasonable to believe in. Furthermore, it will consider a thorough explanation of legislative challenges and recent law enforcements regarding blockchain technology and ICOs. It will be explained how some countries and organizations are regulating the phenomenon and why uniformity and clarity is not a feature of its legislation

Design of Blockchain-based Precision Health-Care Using Soft Systems Methodology

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the application of soft systems methodology (SSM) to address the problematic situation of low opt-in rates for Precision Health-Care (PHC). Design/methodology/approach: The design logic is that when trust is enhanced and compliance is better assured, participants such as patients and their doctors would be more likely to share their medical data and diagnosis for the purpose of precision modeling. Findings: The authors present the findings of an empirical study that confronts the design challenge of increasing participant opt-in to a PHC repository of Electronic Medical Records and genetic sequencing. Guided by SSM, the authors formulate design rules for the establishment of a trust-less platform for PHC which incorporates key principles of transparency, traceability and immutability. Research limitations/implications: The SSM approach has been criticized for its lack of “rigour” and “replicability”. This is a fallacy in understanding its purpose – theory exploration rather than theory confirmation. Moreover, it is unlikely that quantitative modeling yields any clearer an understanding of complex, socio-technical systems. Practical implications: The application of Blockchain, a platform for distributed ledgers, and associated technologies present a feasible approach for resolving the problematic situation of low opt-in rates. Social implications: A consequence of low participation is the weak recall and precision of descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytic models. Factors such as cyber-crime, data violation and the potential for misuse of genetic and medical records have led to a lack of trust from key stakeholders – accessors, participants, miners and regulators – to varying degrees. Originality/value: The application of Blockchain as a trust-enabling platform in the domain of an emerging eco-system such as precision health is novel and pioneering