Technologies for Modern Digital Entrepreneurship: Understanding Emerging Tech at the Cutting-Edge of the Web 3.0 Economy

218 Pages·2020·3.972 MB·English

by  Abeba N. Turi

Technologies
for Modern Digital
Entrepreneurship
Understanding Emerging Tech
at the Cutting-Edge
of the Web 3.0 Economy
―
Abeba N. Turi
TECHNOLOGIES FOR
MODERN DIGITAL
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
UNDERSTANDING EMERGING TECH
AT THE CUTTING-EDGE OF THE WEB 3.0
ECONOMY
Abeba N. Turi
Technologies for Modern Digital Entrepreneurship: Understanding
Emerging Tech at the Cutting-Edge of the Web 3.0 Economy
Abeba N. Turi
Vancouver, BC, Canada
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-6004-3 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-6005-0
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6005-0
Copyright © 2020 by Abeba N. Turi
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To the Turi family.
And to my very own Y and V, with love.
Contents
About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Chapter 1: Digital Economy and the Information Society            1
Chapter 2: Crowd-Based Digital Business Models                   43
Chapter 3: Web 3.0: The Distributed Information
Network Economy                                    87
Chapter 4: Blockchain and Distributed Ledger
Technology Applications                              123
Chapter 5: Currency Under the Web 3.0 Economy                155
G lossary of Selected Tech Terms                                   187
R eferences                                                       193
I ndex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
About the Author
Dr. Abeba N. Turi is a scholar with expertise in
Digital Economy. She obtained her Ph.D.
specializing in the areas of the Digital Economy at
the Rovira i Virgili University in Spain. Dr. Turi has
worked as an assistant researcher with the
UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy, Spain. She has
also served in various international research and
teaching positions in Africa, Europe and Canada.
Currently, Dr. Turi is an instructor at the University
Canada West in Vancouver. She has experience
working in the areas of web-based business
models, which is at the core of modern digital
entrepreneurship. Dr. Turi’s works have been
presented in several international conferences in
China, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Dr. Turi identifies
herself as a disruptive tech and decentralization enthusiast.
Acknowledgments
God, you never stop working.
Coming from an interdisciplinary background, I owe an enormous debt of
gratitude to the individuals and organizations that allowed me to develop my
skill set around the digital economy space through projects, trainings, work-
shops, and conference engagements over the last few years. Next, I’d like to
thank Prof. Victoria Lemieux for taking the time to read the book manuscript
and provide detailed and constructive comments. I’d also like to acknowledge
an encouraging friend, Dr. Anwar Seid, and a supportive colleague, Dave
Keighron, for the superb chat we had around this topic, which helped to sub-
stantiate some of the content coverage of the book. Additionally, my special
thanks to Dr. Yitagesu Zewdu for his fascinating insight into the geopolitics of
the information society. Besides, I am grateful to Blockchain@UBC, for I was
given the opportunity to learn and explore more about DLTs through the
Blockchain Summer Institute. My sincere gratitude also goes to Rita and
Shivangi, who polished and gave this book its current shape.
Introduction
The fourth industrial revolution has created big tech winners and monopolis-
tic companies that lead the digital economy space today. The unfolding mount
in the digital economy is leaving a significant footprint across industries from
production, distribution to consumption of goods and services. This eco-
nomic system is flooded with a dense carpet of tech megatrends. These tech-
nological advancements have significantly contributed to the contemporary
global inter-state and intra-state order. To this effect, regional and business
competitiveness depends on how states and industries respond to the dynam-
ics of emerging technologies around them.
As technology plays a strategically vital role in perceived power of a state
through national security and economic competitiveness, some of the major
innovations like the Web, robotics, Internet of Things, cloud computing, artifi-
cial intelligence, and mobile technology (fifth generation of wireless communi-
cations, 5G) have created a technological rivalry between global powers.1 Of
course, these enabling technologies come with tremendous opportunities. For
example, not to mention all, the World Economic Forum report indicates that
about 10% of the global economy, by 2027, will be recorded on blockchain.2 In
the mobile technology space, McKinsey predicts that in the coming ten years,
the 5G connectivity revolution alone could boost the global GDP by 1.2–2 tril-
lion USD, mainly in healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, and retail sec-
tors.3 As the Chinese tech company Huawei holds the upper hand in 5G tech,
the Western world is racing to conquer the perceived challenge posed by
China, mainly on a geopolitical basis.4 That being the case, the fight over tech-
nological leadership thus has both political and economic incentives for nations.
Notably, enabled by emerging technologies, data-driven decision-making has
continued to be a growing field of the knowledge economy. For example, real-
time data access to patients accelerates research and development in the
1 See Hoffmann et al. (2019), Brown (2019), and Johnson (2019) for details on the technol-
ogy geopolitics.
2 www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GAC15_Technological_Tipping_Points_
report_2015.pdf
3 www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/
our-insights/connected-world-an-evolution-in-connectivity-beyond-
the-5g-revolution
4 www.economist.com/business/2020/04/08/america-does-not-want-china-to-
dominate-5g-mobile-networks
xii Introduction
medical industry. In this regard, tech has a track record of effectively facilitating
and providing robust solutions to the medical industry. To mention some,
Kinsa’s smart thermometer has helped in tracking flu trends of the United
States in 2018.5 Recently, as the pandemic challenges major economies, trends
in digital tech for tracking, testing, and treating tools show tremendous growth.
Similarly, in Canada, an app developed by the Self Care Catalysts (SCC)
enables tracking of COVID-19 health.6 By leveraging the technologies in the
space and facilitating the access to the aggregated real-time data (big data) on
patients, such applications lend promising future to our “new normal” world
of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another development toward fighting the coro-
navirus through tech solutions is the US-initiated supercomputing consor-
tium, COVID-19 High-Performance Computing, in collaboration with tech
companies and academia.7, 8 Beyond the med-tech, social media platforms, and
mobile technologies that kept people connected while maintaining physical
distances to enabling software of working from home and digitized financial
service access, digitization has played a significant role.
However, as centralized mega-platforms work with authorities in combating
the COVID-19 pandemic, the issues of user data privacy remain to be a con-
cern. A typical example here is the usage of mobile ad location data in 500 US
cities by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in tracing stay-at-
home compliance and the spread of the coronavirus.9 On the other end, data
liberation is on the verge, which could potentially boost global GDPs through
the replication of data. It is interesting to see the giant tech, Microsoft,
embracing the previously unthinkable move toward open data.10 Such devel-
opments in data accessibility hold enormous opportunities both for estab-
lished businesses and startups. This will significantly allow for the minimization
of digital waste and enable efficient utilization of previously underutilized
aggregated data for broader purposes such as AI algorithms and business
intelligence systems.
5 www.mobihealthnews.com/content/kinsas-crowdsourced-smart-thermometer-
data-now-rivals-cdc-tracking-flu-trends
6 www.newswire.ca/news-releases/free-covid-19-health-tracking-app-
launched-to-help-canadians-track-and-manage-their-health-and-provide-
frontline-researchers-and-public-health-officials-real-time-large-
scale-open-source-public-data-816809411.html
7 https://covid19-hpc-consortium.org/
8 www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/white-house-announces-
new-partnership-unleash-u-s-supercomputing-resources-fight-covid-19/
9 www.wsj.com/articles/government-tracking-how-people-move-around-in-c
oronavirus-pandemic-11585393202
10 www.economist.com/business/2020/04/23/microsoft-embraces-big-data
Introduction xiii
In addition to a significant socioeconomic and political catalyzation, the digital
economic system has paved the way for innovation misconduct that has dis-
torted human interactions. From the social media fake contents, business
misconducts of the Theranos' fraud charges11 and China’s med-tech faulty
vaccine scandal,12 Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal13 to the Russian
election meddling in the sociopolitical discord of the United States, tech has
been in place.14
The preceding discussion clearly illustrates how emerging technologies hold
root in every aspect of our socioeconomic and political interactions today.
Thus, excelling in this is a crucial strategic decision one could make to remain
competent in the dynamically changing digital world. More importantly, from
a business perspective, irreversible consumer behavior is here to tap through
technological solutions. As the baby boomers and millennials continue to
migrate to the digital world and the digital native Gen Z immerses itself into
the new digitized lifestyle, the digital transformation of businesses and applica-
tion of robust emerging tech solutions are a crucial thing to consider.
Accordingly, this book is designed to flesh out the main developments in the
digital economy space with an emphasis on emerging technologies of the web-
based business models and distributed ledger technologies that facilitate
modern digital entrepreneurship. More specifically, transformation within the
digital economic system will be presented in depth by taking the cases of
centralized crowd-based business models of the Web 2.0 economy with a
further discussion on the distributed network economic system of the Web
3.0. In an effort to bridge the gap between advances in the digital economy
space and reader interest, each chapter presents up-to-date data and illustra-
tive examples.
11 www.businessinsider.com/the-history-of-silicon-valley-unicorn-theranos-
and-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-2018-5
12 www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/business/china-vaccine-fine.html
13 www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/
facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-diagram
14 www.cnn.com/2017/10/12/us/2016-presidential-election-investigation-
fast-facts/index.html