Regulating Disruption: Blockchain, GDPR, and Questions of Data Sovereignty

The article discusses the nature of law in cyberspace. Topics discussed include distinction between regulation as infringement of private autonomy and regulation as a collaborative enterprise; blockchain regulatory conundrum; and neoliberal market-complementing regulation. Also being discussed is the regulation for economic efficiency and consumer choice

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

Exploring Factors Influencing Adoption of Blockchain in Accounting Applications using Technology–Organization–Environment Framework

Blockchain is one of the most promising technological innovations of recent times, with the potential to change the very way information systems are used by the accounting function. It is however expected to be disruptive and yet to see high adoption rates. Identification of factors influencing the adoption is required to empower the accounting fraternity to harness the full potential of blockchains. This study is one of the first to inductively explore and develop an adoption model for blockchains as well as for accounting applications with theoretical groundings in the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework, which has been extended with a variable for trust. Triangulation of methods and data sources used in this study contributed to the depth of research and understanding. A comprehensive literature review was first conducted. Its results were further enhanced using the encoding methodology, based on which influencing factors were identified and a model for adoption was developed. A qualitative exploratory study was undertaken next on twelve organizations at the cusp of adoption for accounting applications. Eight significant factors influencing the adoption thus identified are: relative advantage, uncertainty, top management support, technology readiness, industry, regulatory environment, competitive pressure and trust. The study contributes to revealing the relevance of blockchain to accounting while highlighting potential disruptions to enable better evaluation of the technology for adoption. The results may have limited generalizability, which may be overcome through a quantitative study in the future