1,721,001 research outputs found
For the Win : How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business
No full textMillions flock to their computers, consoles, mobile phones, tablets, and social networks each day to play World of Warcraft, Farmville, Scrabble, and countless other games, generating billions in sales each year. The careful and skillful construction of these games is built on decades of research into human motivation and psychology: A well-designed game goes right to the motivational heart of the human psyche.\ud
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In For the Win, authors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter argue persuasively that gamemakers need not be the only ones benefiting from game design. Werbach and Hunter are lawyers and World of Warcraft players who created the world’s first course on gamification at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In their book, they reveal how game thinking—addressing problems like a game designer—can motivate employees and customers and create engaging experiences that can transform your business.\ud
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For the Win reveals how a wide range of companies are successfully using game thinking. It also offers an explanation of when gamifying makes the most sense and a 6-step framework for using games for marketing, productivity enhancement, innovation, employee motivation, customer engagement, and more.\ud
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In this informative guide, Werbach and Hunter reveal how game thinking can yield winning solutions to real-world business problems. Let the games begin
After the Digital Tornado
Get PDFOnce a seemingly unambiguous benefit to society, the internet is now the basis for invasions of privacy, massive concentrations of power, and manipulation. Featuring leading technology scholars, this collection examines the challenges of building networks and algorithms that benefit humanity. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A Turning Point for Digital Asset Regulation
No full textPresident Joseph R. Biden’s executive order on digital asset regulation—issued just last week—marks the White House’s first public engagement in the thicket of issues around cryptocurrencies, blockchain, central bank digital currency, and decentralized finance. Those in the crypto community who expected an assault from regulators hell-bent on crushing a threat to traditional financial institutions are breathing a sigh of relief. Those spoiling for a showdown between centralized control and decentralized innovation may be disappointed. But make no mistake: The executive order is a major step forward. The document sets out five primary elements. Three will get all the attention, but the other two are where White House action will have the greatest impact. The first element calls for incorporating digital assets into the fabric of the financial regulatory system, which seeks to protect investors while also promoting capital formation. Crucial questions about digital assets currently lack sufficiently clear answers in the United States: Which activities involve securities—and therefore the Securities and Exchange Commission? What to do about activities that do not involve securities? How should digital asset exchanges and lending platforms be regulated? How can banks or other regulated financial institutions touch digital assets or keep them in custody? Real progress on regulating digital assets will require action by the alphabet soup of federal financial regulatory authorities—SEC, CFTC, OCC, FDIC, Fed, CFPB, FinCEN, OFAC, IRS—and most likely congressional action as well. But the executive order puts the weight of the White House behind these efforts. Similarly, financial sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and the arrest of two Americans for laundering billions of dollars of bitcoin, have placed a spotlight on the illicit finance and national security implications of digital assets. From the beginning, it has been clear that cryptocurrencies, which are tracked on public ledgers and typically hosted at exchanges that are potential points of interdiction, do not present a “get out of jail free” card to the world’s criminals and rogue states. Questions remain, however, about how to ensure the appropriate level of surveillance and enforcement without overly compromising financial privacy or eliminating efficiency benefits. The executive order promotes a nuanced view coupled with greater priority on addressing existing harms. The second element of the executive order is to promote and maintain U.S. competitiveness in a global financial system in which digital assets are increasingly important. Specifically, the executive order “places the highest urgency on research and development efforts” into a potential U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC). Ever since China announced the digital currency research project it started in 2017, which culminated in the country’s e-CNY “digital yuan,” concern has grown that the dollar’s global dominance is under threat. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston developed a CBDC proof of concept with the MIT Digital Currency Initiative. But the United States trails behind places such as China, England, and the European Union in investigating how a CBDC might overcome the limitations of existing payment rails and provide a new foundation for monetary policy. The executive order appropriately does not commit the United States to a particular way of moving forward. CBDCs are not a race that will be won by those first out of the gate. The United States cannot afford, however, to cede the stage entirely to other nations to reinvent currencies for the networked digital era. The third piece of the executive order concerns financial stability and systemic risk. As David Zaring and I argue in a forthcoming law review article, the macroprudential framework of financial regulation, which emphasizes systemic resilience, is worth emulating in related contexts. Compared to traditional sectors of the financial marketplace, the digital asset sector is different — the whole idea is that everything does not run through centralized control points . Yet perhaps it is not really so different. Holdings of most digital assets are heavily concentrated, and a small number of actors have significant power in the market. Because decentralized finance platforms are interoperable and programmable, they may create significant hidden risks through interconnection. The executive order directs the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the interagency body created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, to address systemic risks created by digital assets. This directive, more than anything else, reflects the growth and maturation of the sector. Only a few years ago, central banks dismissed digital assets as too small and separate from the rest of the financial system to pose systemic risks. The final two elements of the executive order will get the least press. Yet they are critical for the healthy development of the digital asset sector. The fourth major pillar is financial inclusion. Proponents of digital assets argue they give retail investors, average consumers, and marginalized groups better access to financial services. Digital assets can remove barriers imposed by banks and other institutions while pushing greater control and ownership out to individuals. Similarly, non-fungible tokens might provide creators with better channels to connect with their audiences. Yet these marginalized groups are still vulnerable to scams, hacks, and hidden arrangements. With the executive order, the U.S. government is now on record as promoting the inclusiveness of digital assets as a policy objective. Finally, it is easy to forget that, despite the size of digital asset trading markets, the underlying technology remains immature. Major blockchain networks are not sufficiently scalable, secure, and interoperable. Important infrastructure elements around digital identity and governance are at a fledgling stage. And the energy use of mining for cryptocurrency networks such as Bitcoin is now a serious matter of concern around the world. Just as in other critical areas such as artificial intelligence, the European Union and China are ahead of the United States in funding research and promoting standards development. The executive order engages non-regulatory components of the federal government, such as the National Science Foundation and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in the cause of promoting technical advancements in digital assets and blockchain technology. The executive order is just a start. But it is important to recognize the difficulty of reaching the starting line. Herding the necessary cats, when there are so many agencies, viewpoints, and personalities involved, is a monstrous effort. Engaging the President and other top officials amid a global pandemic, and now a war in Europe, further adds to the degree of difficulty. The text of the executive order comprises mostly requests for studies and the setting up of working groups, but that is how the machinery of public policy works in the federal government. Saber-rattling speeches by agency heads and senators may make better headlines. Yet this executive order is a turning point. It will elevate digital assets as a topic of public policy concern and force all relevant components of the federal government to engage
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
The Centripetal Network: How the Internet Holds Itself Together, and the Forces Tearing It Apart
Get PDFTwo forces are in tension as the Internet evolves. One pushes toward interconnected common platforms; the other pulls toward fragmentation and proprietary alternatives. Their interplay drives many of the contentious issues in cyberlaw, intellectual property, and telecommunications policy, including the fight over network neutrality for broadband providers, debates over global Internet governance, and battles over copyright online. These are more than just conflicts between incumbents and innovators, or between openness and deregulation. Their roots lie in the fundamental dynamics of interconnected networks.
Fortunately, there is an interdisciplinary literature on network properties, albeit one virtually unknown to legal scholars. The emerging field of network formation theory explains the pressures threatening to pull the Internet apart, and suggests responses. The Internet as we know it is surprisingly fragile. To continue the extraordinary outpouring of creativity and innovation that the Internet fosters, policy-makers must protect its composite structure against both fragmentation and excessive concentration of power.
This paper, the first to apply network formation models to Internet law, shows how the Internet pulls itself together as a coherent whole. This very process, however, creates and magnifies imbalances that encourage balkanization. By understanding how networks behave, governments and other legal decision-makers can avoid unintended consequences and target their actions appropriately. A network-theoretic perspective holds great promise to inform the law and policy of the information economy
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