Enabling Technologies for Web 3.0: A Comprehensive Survey

Web 3.0 represents the next stage of Internet evolution, aiming to empower users with increased autonomy, efficiency, quality, security, and privacy. This evolution can potentially democratize content access by utilizing the latest developments in enabling technologies. In this paper, we conduct an in-depth survey of enabling technologies in the context of Web 3.0, such as blockchain, semantic web, 3D interactive web, Metaverse, Virtual reality/Augmented reality, Internet of Things technology, and their roles in shaping Web 3.0. We commence by providing a comprehensive background of Web 3.0, including its concept, basic architecture, potential applications, and industry adoption. Subsequently, we examine recent breakthroughs in IoT, 5G, and blockchain technologies that are pivotal to Web 3.0 development. Following that, other enabling technologies, including AI, semantic web, and 3D interactive web, are discussed. Utilizing these technologies can effectively address the critical challenges in realizing Web 3.0, such as ensuring decentralized identity, platform interoperability, data transparency, reducing latency, and enhancing the system's scalability. Finally, we highlight significant challenges associated with Web 3.0 implementation, emphasizing potential solutions and providing insights into future research directions in this field

The European Language Resources and Technologies Forum: Shaping the Future of the Multilingual Digital Europe

Proceedings of the 1st FLaReNet Forum on the European Language Resources and Technologies, held in Vienna, at the Austrian Academy of Science, on 12-13 February 2009

Tokens Matter

During the global pandemic, information workers were abruptly forced to engage in virtual work. This paper reports on an experiment seeking to formalize the formalization of small team coordination at London Blockchain Lab through the use of blockchain-supported tokenization. The Web3 organizing vision promotes the technology as an enabler of new ways for individuals and organizations to engage in the transparent exchange of scarce digital rights. However, little attention has been paid to the use of blockchain technologies to coordinate distributed collaborative activities. This paper seeks to understand the viability of this vision amongst a community of expected early adopters through design experimentation resulting in interview data. The study points towards the significant gap between the Web3 vision and the problems of realizing this in practice. This highlights fundamental barriers to using blockchain for team collaboration while also pointing toward its potential. Even the most willing and able find it hard to turn code into law through tokenizing collaboration

Developing decentralized business within highly institutionally centralized environment: the case of blockchain-based business in China

Blockchain-based business and therefore cryptocurrency-related activities are spreading globally developing the newly emerging crypto economy. However, regulatory responses to the crypto economy and businesses within it were very diverse in different countries. Given the above, the main research aim was to investigate how blockchain-based business (BBB) with idea of opposing the institutional regulations can be developed in the regula-tory adverse institutional environment. More specifically, this thesis investigated, how BBB are developed within the ultimate institutional constrains in the environment, such as China, where crypto-related activities are banned. The research question for the thesis was how to develop decentralized BBB in highly centralized institutional environment of China? The research objectives were to assess blockchain technology's impact on Chinese companies; to explore the situation of BBB in China; and to explore how companies in BBB in China cope with the institutional environment. The case study approach was undertaken for this research. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with six interviews, leaders of successful BBB in China. To sup-port primary data, secondary data was collected to deeper learn about the BBB cases in-vestigated. The findings suggest that strict institutional environment for BBB in China has a significant impact on BBB innovation and growth in several diverse ways. On the one hand, the Chi-nese government is promoting blockchain technology and innovations related to it. On the other hand, the cryptocurrency, as one of the most prominent blockchain technology application, is a contentious issue that the Chinese government opposes. As a result, the Chinese government considers BBB regulation to be necessary and essential. Firms that are operating in Chinese market do not necessarily need to stop their operations and de-velopment of the BBB. However, they need to make various adjustments to balance out the requirements of the regulatory regime. The thesis contributes to the literature by showcasing how innovative decentralized busi-nesses, such as BBB can remain active within adverse and regulatory pressing institutional environment

On reputation evaluation in 2.0 communities.

Current technology has disappointed many members of WEB2.0 communities by its slow and tough adaptability to specific users\u2bc skills and competences. Most of the largest WEB2.0 communities rely on the work of their members to create the resources they are built on, a business model known under the acronym UGC (User Generated Contents), which is today very popular yet still very simple and immature. Presently the vast majority of the communities that relay on UGCs lack an accurate ranking system for their most proficient members and almost none of them provide an effective rewarding mechanism. Sometimes they do provide means to cooperatively evaluate and classify the available resources, but very few of these mechanisms take in account the competence of the voters. Although rough, the current technology seems sufficient to confer to some cooperative web communities a discrete success, which for the most part is due to their core-members passion and commitment. Unfortunately deficiencies like the ones described can involve that, over time, only a small amount of the members keep committed and willing to produce resources of a certain quality. This tendency leads to the situation in which, although the community grows in terms of numbers, in proportion its value decreases. Considering the fast diffusion of web2.0 communities and the new emerging Enterprise2.0 communities phenomena, this problem needs no longer to be underestimated. 2.0 communities should start thinking about new means to raise their quality standards in order to stay effective and successful over time. Providing communities with concrete rewarding systems like remunerative ones could fix the problem, nevertheless this approach rarely and loosely has been implemented so far. The reason is that the task involves several and not trivial side problems, such as the necessity of an advanced ranking mechanisms to evaluate the members. This method should be able to consider complex factors like competence and commitment, but at the same time it should be easily understandable and shared by the members of the community. In order to make sure that the members share and agree with the rating system it must involve their collaboration, which is a non trivial problem, especially in Entrprise2.0 communities. For the aforementioned reasons I propose as a means to overcome the problem a method based on reputation rather than competence and commitment, which is named Reputation Community Evaluation (RCE). This new approach is not based solely on quantitative measurements but relies on an algorithm which exploits the community member reputations to evaluate the resources and the members themselves. In this method the reputation of the single member grows or decreases according to its activity in the community and the evaluations received from the other members over a certain period of time. All members opinions/votes are themselves weighted accordingly to the single member reputation. This approach makes possible to put in place new kinds of business models, which aim to use users reputations as a digital currency inside Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 communities

Pathway to Future Symbiotic Creativity

This report presents a comprehensive view of our vision on the development path of the human-machine symbiotic art creation. We propose a classification of the creative system with a hierarchy of 5 classes, showing the pathway of creativity evolving from a mimic-human artist (Turing Artists) to a Machine artist in its own right. We begin with an overview of the limitations of the Turing Artists then focus on the top two-level systems, Machine Artists, emphasizing machine-human communication in art creation. In art creation, it is necessary for machines to understand humans' mental states, including desires, appreciation, and emotions, humans also need to understand machines' creative capabilities and limitations. The rapid development of immersive environment and further evolution into the new concept of metaverse enable symbiotic art creation through unprecedented flexibility of bi-directional communication between artists and art manifestation environments. By examining the latest sensor and XR technologies, we illustrate the novel way for art data collection to constitute the base of a new form of human-machine bidirectional communication and understanding in art creation. Based on such communication and understanding mechanisms, we propose a novel framework for building future Machine artists, which comes with the philosophy that a human-compatible AI system should be based on the "human-in-the-loop" principle rather than the traditional "end-to-end" dogma. By proposing a new form of inverse reinforcement learning model, we outline the platform design of machine artists, demonstrate its functions and showcase some examples of technologies we have developed. We also provide a systematic exposition of the ecosystem for AI-based symbiotic art form and community with an economic model built on NFT technology. Ethical issues for the development of machine artists are also discussed

Platform Immunity Redefined

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) immunizes “interactive computer services” from most claims arising out of third-party content posted on the service. Passed in 1996, section 230 is a vital law for allowing free expression online, but it is ill-suited for addressing some of the harms that arise in the modern platform-based economy. This Article proposes to redefine section 230 immunity for sharing economy platforms and online marketplaces by tying internet platform immunity to the economic relationship between the platform and the third party. It primarily focuses on one key flaw of section 230: its binary classification of online actors as either “interactive computer services” (who are immune under the statute) or “information content providers” (who are not immune). This binary classification, while perhaps adequate for the internet that existed in 1996, fails to account for the full range of economic activities in which modern platforms now engage. This Article argues that courts applying section 230 should incorporate joint enterprise liability theory to better define the contours of platform immunity. A platform should lose immunity when there exists a common business purpose, specific pecuniary interest, and shared right of control in the underlying transaction giving rise to liability. Sharing economy platforms, such as Airbnb and Uber, and online marketplaces, such as Amazon, are primary examples of platforms that may function as joint enterprises. By using joint enterprise theory to redefine platform immunity, this Article seeks to promote greater fairness to tort victims while otherwise retaining section 230’s core free expression purpose

Knowing together

In den letzten Jahren sind eine Reihe neuer Anwendungen im Internet entstanden, die zumeist als Web2.0 oder social software bezeichnet werden. Viele dieser Anwendungen sind gekennzeichnet durch die Einbindung mehrerer Agenten in Prozesse zur Verbreitung, Organisation und Herstellung von Wissen. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Dissertation besteht in der Analyse der epistemologischen Relevanz dieser epistemischen social software Anwendungen. Da die Kommunikation und Interaktion zwischen mehreren Agenten deren Schlüsselmerkmal darstellt, bildet die Soziale Erkenntnistheorie als philosophische Disziplin, welche die Weisen untersucht, in denen Wissen sozial bedingt ist, die theoretische Grundlage für die Analyse der epistemischen Prozesse innerhalb dieser Systeme. Weil bisher keine soziale Erkenntnistheorie eine ausreichende Theorie für die Analyse epistemischer social software zur Verfügung stellen konnte, habe ich die Grundlagen für ein neues sozio-epistemisches Model entwickelt, welches zwar im sozio-epistemologischen Diskurs verankert ist, jedoch um Erkenntnisse aus dem Feld der Science and Technology Studies (STS) erweitert wurde. Dieses Model gründet in der Klassifikation von sozio-technischen epistemischen Systemen anhand unterschiedlicher Mechanismen der Schließung, welche zur Beendigung sozio-epistemischer Prozesse verwendet werden. Diese Klassifikation anhand der drei Schließungsmechanismen Integration, Aggregation und Selektion zielt nicht auf die Einebnung der Differenzen zwischen sozio-technischen epistemischen Systemen, vielmehr liegt ihr Wert in ihrer heuristischen Fruchtbarkeit, darin Differenzen aufzumachen. Systeme, welche unterschiedliche Schließungsmechanismen nutzen, sind gebunden an unterschiedliche soziale, technische und epistemische Voraussetzungen, sie haben unterschiedliche Stärken und Schwächen und eignen sich daher für unterschiedliche epistemische Aufgaben. Das von mir entwickelte Modell lenkt dabei die Aufmerksamkeit auf ein bislang weitgehend in der sozialen Erkenntnistheorie vernachlässigtes Thema: das Technische und seine Beziehung zum Sozialen und zum Epistemischen. Da die meisten epistemischen Praktiken heute durchdrungen sind von Technologie, ist deren Berücksichtigung von entscheidender Bedeutung für jede soziale Erkenntnistheorie, die beansprucht, nicht nur normativ angemessen, sondern auch empirisch adäquat zu sein.In recent years new applications emerged on the Web which received the labels Web2.0 or social software. In many of these applications people are engaged in epistemic activities, such as the dissemination, organization or creation of knowledge. The goal of this thesis is to analyze the epistemological relevance of such epistemic social software. Because communication and interaction between multiple agents seems to be the key to understand the epistemic processes within such systems, social epistemology, the philosophical discipline exploring the ways and the extent to which knowledge is social, was chosen as a theoretical framework. However, none of the existing comprehensive social epistemologies delivers a sufficient framework to analyze epistemic social software. Therefore, I have developed a new socio-epistemological framework to analyze epistemic social software which is rooted in socio-epistemological discourse, but amends it with insights from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). My framework is founded on a tripartite classification of socio-technical epistemic system based on the mechanisms they employ to close socio-epistemic processes. These three mechanisms are integration, aggregation and selection. With this classification I do not aim at reducing the differences between systems to their mechanisms of closure. However, I argue that the classification based on this indicator is heuristically fruitful. Systems employing different mechanisms of closure depend on different social, technical and epistemic prerequisites, have different strengths and weaknesses and are optimal for different epistemic tasks. My model puts a fact into the focus that has been neglected so far in social epistemology: the technical and its relationship to the social and the epistemic. Since most epistemic practices are nowadays pervaded by technologies, such a consideration of the role of technologies in these practices seems to be indispensable for any social epistemology that aims at being not only normatively appropriate, but also empirically adequate

Money & Trust in Digital Society, Bitcoin and Stablecoins in ML enabled Metaverse Telecollaboration

We present a state of the art and positioning book, about Digital society tools, namely; Web3, Bitcoin, Metaverse, AI/ML, accessibility, safeguarding and telecollaboration. A high level overview of Web3 technologies leads to a description of blockchain, and the Bitcoin network is specifically selected for detailed examination. Suitable components of the extended Bitcoin ecosystem are described in more depth. Other mechanisms for native digital value transfer are described, with a focus on `money'. Metaverse technology is over-viewed, primarily from the perspective of Bitcoin and extended reality. Bitcoin is selected as the best contender for value transfer in metaverses because of it's free and open source nature, and network effect. Challenges and risks of this approach are identified. A cloud deployable virtual machine based technology stack deployment guide with a focus on cybersecurity best practice can be downloaded from GitHub to experiment with the technologies. This deployable lab is designed to inform development of secure value transaction, for small and medium sized companies

Perspectives on Digital Humanism

This open access book aims to set an agenda for research and action in the field of Digital Humanism through short essays written by selected thinkers from a variety of disciplines, including computer science, philosophy, education, law, economics, history, anthropology, political science, and sociology. This initiative emerged from the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism and the associated lecture series. Digital Humanism deals with the complex relationships between people and machines in digital times. It acknowledges the potential of information technology. At the same time, it points to societal threats such as privacy violations and ethical concerns around artificial intelligence, automation and loss of jobs, ongoing monopolization on the Web, and sovereignty. Digital Humanism aims to address these topics with a sense of urgency but with a constructive mindset. The book argues for a Digital Humanism that analyses and, most importantly, influences the complex interplay of technology and humankind toward a better society and life while fully respecting universal human rights. It is a call to shaping technologies in accordance with human values and needs