Posts

Nintendo: A Winning Hand

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  Nintendo is part of my childhood and I find it interesting to see how completely they dominated the early years of the gaming industry. I based this post on Rogers’s (2003) exposition of their success in a section of his book. The year is 1986. The world is changing. Technology is advancing with leaps and bounds, but the US gaming world lies in tatters after the dismal failure of early innovator Atari to realize its potential. From the land of the rising sun comes an established entertainment company–originally in playing cards–with a risky but quality invention to inaugurate the era of video games and become in an exceptionally short time a household name: Nintendo.  As Rogers (2003) expounds in a section of his book, Nintendo intuitively followed the 5 attributes of a successful innovation:  > Relative Advantage: Nintendo had better graphics than Atari and used perceived (false) shortages to increase demand. > Compatibility: A shrewd business move, the low-cost ...
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Bitcoin: Money for the Digital Age

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  Is an intangible, decentralized global currency the answer? This blog post examines my thoughts on Bitcoin using Shakhatreh’s article from 2022 as a springboard. Prior to researching this my knowledge of Bitcoin was elementary and I consider it an innovation worth understanding.  Shakhatreh examines the benefits and risks involved in using, trading, and mining Bitcoin, as well as proposing safeguards for future use. Like any technological innovation Bitcoin can be difficult for the layperson to understand. Terms like “blockchain” and “mining” in the virtual world embody new concepts, though building on financial practices that most people take for granted. As Shakhatreh (2022) notes, bitcoins are digital images representing value that peer-to-peer transactions have established. BBC Newsnight (2018) likens mining the bitcoins to finding your way through a maze–miners using (increasingly high-powered) computers solve puzzles and approve transactions to gain rewards and fees an...
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Introduction

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Covering assignments relating to coursework in the MSIS program at UTK, this blog will involve responding to articles for the Social Informatics course (INSC 542) taught by Dr Potnis. Possibly I will continue to use it to discuss other points of interest--hence "a penny for my thoughts"--that don't relate to my creative writing contained on my stormiesperanza blog.
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