Significados políticos y jurídicos del uso global de las criptomonedas

The global use of crypto assets is a widespread practice in 2021 among people and companies that are interested in participating in new forms of business that could be very lucrative in the medium term, in addition to representing a new monetary conception of a digital nature that is not controlled by any central bank, nor issued by any state. The purpose of this short essay is to present volume 39, number 71 of Political Issues, by developing a set of reflections on the scope and meaning of cryptocurrencies in today's world. It is concluded that, the mere idea of minting a currency in digital format of the fictitious subject Satoshi Nakamoto creator of Bitcoins, is avant-garde for all people who want to carry out exchanges of values without any centralized mediation of private or public financial institutions, through an open access anomie network made up of free and equal subjects, that can death rate the monetary control of economies by governments, while creating alternatives for Fiat currencies. Among the negative aspects are the growing use of energetic electricity that cryptos require to be able to develop their operations.

#ProtectNature—How Characteristics of Nature Conservation Posts Impact User Engagement on Facebook and Twitter

Social networks expand the communication tools of nature conservation. Nonetheless, to date there is hardly any scientific literature on nature conservation communication in social networks. For this reason, this paper examines 600 Facebook and Twitter posts of three German nature conservation organizations: Federal Agency for the Conservation of Nature (Bundesamt für Naturschutz, BfN), Naturschutzbund Deutschland e. V. (NABU), and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Germany. Using the Mann–Whitney U method and Spearman’s rank correlation analysis, it reveals how post design affects communication success and provides respective recommendations for German conservation organizations. Communication success was divided into four indicators: reactions, comments, shares, and overall engagement as a synthesis of the three. On Facebook, the use of hashtags, images, and many characters (up to 1500) leads to higher success, whereas emojis and videos can reduce it. On Twitter, links, images, and longer posts promote user interactions. Emojis have a positive influence on comments and overall engagement, but a negative influence on reactions and shares. In addition, hashtags reduce overall engagement on Twitter. These results are discussed with reference to similar studies from other political fields in order to provide recommendations for conservation organizations. A validation and expansion of the presented results is recommended due to the growing relevance of digital nature conservation communication.

The better angels of our digital nature? Offensive cyber capabilities and state violence

Transformations in state violence are intimately associated with technological capacity. Like previous era-defining technologies, global digital networks have changed state violence. Offensive cyber capabilities (OCCs) appear to constitute a major technological development that offers the potential for reducing state violence. This article asks: are OCCs really the better angels of our digital nature? Current scholarship in strategic studies, adopting a narrow definition of violence, conceives of OCCs as largely non-violent. This ignores how technology has given rise to new forms of harm to individuals and communities, particularly in the context of violent state repression. We propose using an expanded definition of violence, including affective and community harms, and argue that OCCs relocate, rather than reduce, state violence towards non-bodily harms. Even though their lethal effects are limited, OCCs are not, as is supposed, a non-violent addition to state arsenals. This conclusion has important implications for international affairs, including re-orienting defensive cybersecurity efforts and altering calculations around the perception of OCCs by adversaries.

Characteristics of Electronic (Digital) Evidence Assessment

In modern criminal procedure law enforcement practice, the assessment of electronic (digital) evidence is carried out according to the general rules for assessing evidence, regulated by the criminal procedure law. At the same time, the courts often do not take into account the electronic (digital) nature of the type of evidence under consideration, which sometimes leads to an erroneous criminal legal qualification of the act or to other incorrect conclusions in the final procedural decision. Scientific comprehension of a new source of information in the system of normatively established evidence is in its active phase (and is still far from completion). However, this analysis of theoretical views and law enforcement, primarily judicial, practice makes it possible to put forward proposals for a phased reform of the criminal procedural law and adjusting law enforcement on the basis of obvious and the features of electronic (digital) evidence, which do not cause fundamental objections, concerning their essence, the specifics of collection, verification and evaluation. The paper focuses on such an element of establishment of evidence as evidence assessment, since, due to the fact that it is less formalized, the courts quite often make mistakes when assessing the relevance, admissibility and reliability of electronic (digital) evidence.

On potential development strategies for Digital Humanities

The Humanities are marginalised in today’s ranking of scholarly disciplines. This is partially due to their poorly monetisable subject matter, as well as the fact that their methodology is firmly rooted in the industrial era. The digital revolution provided the humanities with new technologies. However, the same newly available statistical methods that enable generalisation of a large bulk of materials and management of accurate data are fraught with serious limitations. Despite their ostensible novelty, the new methods cannot solve the epistemological problems of humanist learning; instead, they merely help its further adaptation to the inductive logic of scientific positivism, typical of the industrial era. This means that, given their digital nature (i. e., association with the digital era), they fail to generate a new ontology for the humanities. The value of new technologies is mainly determined by our ability to use them in an unconventional way. In order to preserve the subject matter of the humanities in its entirety, one should learn about the potential as well as limitations of digital methods and devise a positive strategy of their application.

Rebounding through the pandemic: towards the digitized and digitalized small hospitality business in China

Purpose Grappling with the sweeping pandemic, the small hospitality business (SHB), smaller in scale and weaker in risk mitigation, has been seriously affected. The purpose of this study aims to supplement the unrepresented area of SHB in China from the digital perspective by drawing on instrumentalization theory (IT). Design/methodology/approach Based on two appropriate and detailed SHB cases, this paper adopted a qualitative approach to understand and conceptualize the focal issue. Findings This study identified the factors affecting SHB at operational, managerial and transformational levels amidst the crisis. It further developed a theoretical framework of the SHB rebound matrix, highlighting the importance of digitization and digitalization. Research limitations/implications The research theoretically confirmed that SHB is internally, externally and essentially restricted and developed a corresponding rebound matrix. It practically supports SHB’s transformation by making recommendations to unleash the potential of digital business. Originality/value This study complements extant descriptive and atheoretical research by focusing on SHB’s underlying digital nature through the lens of IT, providing an evidenced theoretical understanding of SHB’s development amidst and after the pandemic.

No More Strategical Neutrality on Technological Neutrality: Technological Neutrality as a Bridge Between the Analogue Trading Regime and Digital Trade

The World Trade Organization (WTO), a unique multilateral trading regime, has failed to establish its relevance to the digital nature of trade. This article revisits the ‘principle of technological neutrality’ to make the cross-border supply of services by electronic means subject to the current rules-based trading regime. I argue that the principle of technological neutrality could help resolve a number of thorny legal issues: confirming the applicability of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) rules to the delivery of services by electronic means; providing a guideline to determine the likeness of services in the era of digital trade; and backing up an evolutionary approach to interpreting the GATS schedules of commitments. However, the WTO adjudicatory bodies have been reluctant to rely on the principle of technological neutrality, which is referred to as strategic neutrality in this article. This article urges the WTO adjudicatory bodies to abandon their strategically neutral position on technological neutrality immediately. It also explores ways to incorporate the principle of technological neutrality into the world trading system at the bilateral, plurilateral, and multilateral levels.

Decoding the Cauzin Softstrip: a case study in extracting information from old media

Having content in an archive is of limited value if it cannot be read and used. As a case study of extricating information from obsolete media, making it readable once again through deep learning techniques, we examine the Cauzin Softstrip: one of the first two-dimensional bar codes, released in 1985 by Cauzin Systems, which could be used for encoding all manner of digital data. Softstrips occupy a curious middle ground, as they were both physical and digital. The bar codes were printed on paper, and in that sense are no different in an archival way than any printed material. Softstrips can be found in old computer magazines, computer books, and booklets of software Cauzin produced. However, managing the digital nature of these physical artifacts falls within the scope of digital curation. To make the information on them readable and useful, the digital information needs to be extracted, which originally would have occurred using a physical Cauzin Softstrip reader. Obtaining a working Softstrip reader is already extremely difficult and will most likely be impossible in the coming years. In order to extract the encoded data, we created a digital Softstrip reader, making Softstrip data accessible without needing a physical reader. Our decoding strategy is able to decode over 91% of the 1229 Softstrips in our Softstrip corpus; this rises to 99% if we only consider Softstrip images produced under controlled conditions. Furthermore, we later acquired another set of 117 Softstrips and we were able to decode nearly 95% of them with no adjustments to the decoder. These excellent results underscore the fact that technology like deep learning is readily accessible to non-experts; we obtained these results using a convolutional neural network, even though neither of the authors are expert in the area.

Digital Nature Explorations

This chapter provides guidance on integrating interactive technology with nature-based curriculum and outdoor learning in early childhood classrooms in ways that offer unique opportunities for children to explore and learn. Through what is referred to as “Digital Nature Explorations,” young children develop the foundations identified in the International Society for Technology in Education for Students standards and the Nature Education Guidelines as early learners utilize digital tools that open new possibilities in their understanding of the natural world.

Quaran-Teens 2020 Blog Series

The aim of this chapter is to examine Quaran-Teens 2020, a collaborative, digital, high school anthropology blog project during COVID-19 to demonstrate the effectiveness of auto-ethnography as a social science method, rhetorical writing style, and digital media pedagogy. The data are collected from a digital collaboration of two international baccalaureate classes at a private, international school in Memphis, Tennessee from March to June 2020. The content of the blog posts is analyzed in terms of critical self-inquiry, the social construction of society, storytelling, and ethical considerations. The findings show the effectiveness of auto-ethnography as a timely method of sociolinguistics data collection and persuasive rhetorical narrative approach, especially in times of digital media and cultural crisis, because it situates the individual both as a culturally produced and culture-producing person. The collaborative, digital nature of the project suggests ways to overcome the traditional limitations of ethnography and may be an effective strategy beyond the specific context.