Review of studies of blockchain technology effects on the shipping industry

Decision-making is a prolific research area in the internet era, which has propelled globalization and the virtual elimination of many country border barriers. However, effective decision-making in the shipping industry is a time consuming and often complicated process. Digital evolution has provided new innovative organizational operation methods. Blockchain technology—a basic component of the Fourth Industrial Revolution—is one such innovation that promises to alter the process of decision-making. However, only a few academic studies have explored the decision-making aspect of blockchain technology. Moreover, there is a dearth of comprehensive research on how blockchain affects decisions in the shipping industry. This study explored how this novice technology can address issues, such as vast documentation and information asymmetry in the shipping industry. Specifically, grounded theory was used to qualitatively investigate extant practices and examine the potential impact of blockchain technology on decision-making in the shipping industry and the potential of using blockchain technology to emancipate decision-making. The study results indicate that the instant and reliable data-sharing capability of blockchain can significantly impact the shipping industry, while transforming its decision-making processes.

Media and Parental Communication

Both popular media and scholarship have attributed adolescents' antisocial values and behaviors in part to media usage. Nevertheless, many scholars posit that media usage can be positive in certain contexts and that parent-child communication may abate negative media effects. An analysis of the educational longitudinal study data from 2002 to 2006 examines the effects both parent-child communication and various forms of media had on millennial teenagers' values development during a time of tremendous digital evolution. Results support that not all media was negative in effect on millennial value development and that parent-child communication may counteract some negative effects of media.

The Development and Transformation of the Bank Card Market as an Imperative for Digitalization: the Case of Central and Eastern European Countries

The purpose of this study is to determine the development trends of the major determinants of the bank card market in eight countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the period from 2010 to 2019. Continuing a study carried out in 2018, further comparative analysis of the “Bank Cards Market Index” proposed earlier and based on a system of interrelated indicators of bank payment cards, ATMs and POS‑terminals, was carried out. We provide an overview of the rankings of Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia using international ranking systems such as “The Legatum Prosperity Index,” “Doing Business,” “The Index of Economic Freedom,” and the “Вank Cards Market Index.” Further studies of three international ranking systems, as well as the “Bank Cards Market Index,” again confirmed the similarity of the development models of the bank card market in Poland and Ukraine. To study the impact of the digitalization of economics and Covid–19 on the bank card market, a deeper analysis of two cases (Poland and Ukraine, as two similar bank card markets) was carried out using the “Digital Evolution Index.” In the course of the research, it was concluded that the “Вank Cards Market Index” can be successfully used for further research of the banking sector of different countries. Also, the growth trend of cashless payments in the bank card market and the possible transformation of the market under the influence of Covid–19, and the global digitalization of economics were noticed. Taking into account the above trend, further studies of the system of interrelated indicators of bank payment cards, ATMs, and POS terminals should be carried out using the “Digital Evolution Index” or other international indexes that characterize the level of digitalization of the economy in the researched countries.

Disruptive Innovation: Beyond Media Convergence in Content Production

The inception of television in the late 1930s marked the beginning of a global phenomenon, where until now it continues to have a major impact on advertising, news, radio, film, and the world. Television and other traditional media inevitably enter periods of transformation, thanks to the digital evolution in information and communication technology. The advent of the Internet-based technologies has created a perfect storm that pushes the emergence of new media. For television or other traditional media to remain relevant, media convergence becomes one of the solutions. This process absolutely affects the content production as the method and format used for traditional media are no longer suitable. To better understand the situation and determine other solutions, the term disruptive innovation highlighted through a series of industrial revolutions is adopted. The latter is a concept that has gained considerable currency among practitioners. Using the literature research method, this study reviews the findings in the media that result from disruptive innovation and address the inevitable convergence in content production. It then summarizes the literature into three areas: 1.) the aspects of the traditional media and new media; 2.) the concept and context of disruptive innovation, media convergence, and content production; and 3.) the relationship between disruptive innovation and media convergence in content production. Simultaneously, it presents the advantages and disadvantages of the discussed topic and finally highlights the limitations that serve as a platform for potential innovations and further guided and explorative research in the future while invigorating academic interests.

Digital Evolution for Ecology Research: A Review

In digital evolution, populations of computational organisms evolve via the same principles that govern natural selection in nature. These platforms have been used to great effect as a controlled system in which to conduct evolutionary experiments and develop novel evolutionary theory. In addition to their complex evolutionary dynamics, many digital evolution systems also produce rich ecological communities. As a result, digital evolution is also a powerful tool for research on eco-evolutionary dynamics. Here, we review the research to date in which digital evolution platforms have been used to address eco-evolutionary (and in some cases purely ecological) questions. This work has spanned a wide range of topics, including competition, facilitation, parasitism, predation, and macroecological scaling laws. We argue for the value of further ecological research in digital evolution systems and present some particularly promising directions for further research.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ТА ТЕНДЕНЦІЇ ЦИФРОВОЇ ЕКОНОМІКИ В УКРАЇНІ

УДК 330.341; JEL Classification: O33 Мета: Метою статті є вивчення основних тенденцій розвитку цифрової економіки України та ідентифікація чинного законодавчого підґрунтя. Методика дослідження: В роботі використано методи аналізу та синтезу, системний підхід, порівняльний аналіз. Результати: Характерною ознакою сучасного етапу розвитку економіки є використання цифрових технологій, які стали каталізатором різкого збільшення мобільності товарних та фінансових потоків, забезпечують високу швидкість передачі інформації, внесли значний вклад в глобалізаційні та інтеграційні процеси світової економіки. Інформаційні технології стали невід’ємною частиною суспільних відносин та призвели до появи нових галузей господарства, ринків, конкурентних товарів та послуг. Одним із важливих параметрів, які на світовому рівні визначають якість та ступінь розвитку цифрової економіки, є світові рейтинги. Згідно з Концепцією розвитку цифрової економіки та суспільства України на 2018-2020 основними рейтинговими цілями її реалізації є досягнення визначених позицій у рейтингу. Для аналізу особливостей та тенденцій розвитку цифрової економіки України авторами проведено дослідження рейтингових індексів, що дають змогу оцінити її стан: Digital Economy and Society Index; Digital Evolution Index; Digital Adoption Index; ICT Development Index; Global Innovation Index; Networked Readiness Index; e-Intensity; IMD World Digital Competiveness Index; Global Competitiveness Index. В дослідженні проведено аналіз стану рівня використання та розвитку цифрових технологій в країні. Наукова новизна: існуючі нормативно-правові акти, що регламентують розвиток цифрової економіки України, актуалізують необхідність їх уніфікації та консолідації у вигляді Стратегії розвитку цифрової економіки України як стійкого законодавчого підґрунтя для забезпечення стратегічного розвитку цифрової економіки держави. Забезпечення розвитку цифрової економіки України передбачається через періодичне прийняття строкових програмних документів на у формі чинної Концепції розвитку цифрової економіки та суспільства України на 2018-2020 роки. Практична значущість: проведений аналіз та визначені особливості та тенденції розвитку цифрової економіки складають інтерес для органів державної влади, до відання яких належить регулювання цифрової економіки; для вітчизняних та зарубіжних науковців, що ведуть дослідження з цього питання.

Symbiosis in Digital Evolution: Past, Present, and Future

Symbiosis, the living together of unlike organisms as symbionts, is ubiquitous in the natural world. Symbioses occur within and across all scales of life, from microbial to macro-faunal systems. Further, the interactions between symbionts are multimodal in both strength and type, can span from parasitic to mutualistic within one partnership, and persist over generations. Studying the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of symbiosis in natural or laboratory systems poses a wide range of challenges, including the long time scales at which symbioses evolve de novo, the limited capacity to experimentally control symbiotic interactions, the weak resolution at which we can quantify interactions, and the idiosyncrasies of current model systems. These issues are especially challenging when seeking to understand the ecological effects and evolutionary pressures on and of a symbiosis, such as how a symbiosis may shift between parasitic and mutualistic modes and how that shift impacts the dynamics of the partner population. In digital evolution, populations of computational organisms compete, mutate, and evolve in a virtual environment. Digital evolution features perfect data tracking and allows for experimental manipulations that are impractical or impossible in natural systems. Furthermore, modern computational power allows experimenters to observe thousands of generations of evolution in minutes (as opposed to several months or years), which greatly expands the range of possible studies. As such, digital evolution is poised to become a keystone technique in our methodological repertoire for studying the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of symbioses. Here, we review how digital evolution has been used to study symbiosis, and we propose a series of open questions that digital evolution is well-positioned to answer.

The importance and development of safety awareness with soft skills in industrial environment

In the 21st century digitization and online presence affect all areas and stages of life. Everyone becomes a user of the virtual world, both in the professional and in everyday life. There is an increasing priority for the safe use of cyberspace, for a conscious presence. The 21st century and digital evolution expect new attitudes and skill changes in all areas of life, be it the private sector, the workplace or education. With the current methods, the education system often fails to prepare young workers for the new work environment, so it is relevant that we also find the right way to form. As the young people of Generation Z and Alpha already look at the new cyber world from a completely different perspective, we can change their way of thinking and develop their skills differently, facilitating the due process of lifelong learning and development. The expectations and needs of the labour market are forced to change. The reasons for the change are the revolutionized environmental impacts, cybersecurity threats and the transformation of the generational characteristics of employees. The current topic of my research is what industry 4.0 employers expect, what gaps they face, what methods they use to keep security awareness at the right level, and how they try to put employees and their workflows into cyberspace. The study goes beyond mapping safety awareness. In addition, it also examines soft skills that may influence or make safety awareness more effective. After all, a person’s attitude can change as their way of thinking changes.

PROTECTION OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE FROM EMERGING THREATS

Today's society is in a continuous transformation towards a digitalized society. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated worldwide the transition from the physical to the online environment of services provided by both public and private institutions. With a digitized society in our defense types of risks, threats and risks to critical infrastructures that support digital evolution. Thus, opponents turn their attention to new forms of asymmetric attacks to generate states of terror against states or individuals or groups of people. Thus, among the newest and most developed threats are those that use cyberterrorism, network-based warfare or attacks using technologies imported from the military such as drones carrying improvised explosive devices. Countermeasures and resilient systems must be prepared against them.